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BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 





ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 

HUMAN NATURE IN THE BIBLE 

HUMAN NATURE AND THE GOSPEL 

AS I LIKE IT, FIRST, SECOND, THIRD SERIES 
ESSAYS ON MODERN NOVELISTS 

ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS 

ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 

ESSAYS ON BOOKS 

READING THE BIBLE 

TEACHING IN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 

THE ADVANCE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 
THE ADVANCE OF ENGLISH POETRY 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THEATRE 
ARCHIBALD MARSHALL 

SOME MAKERS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
HOWELLS, JAMES, BRYANT, AND OTHER ESSAYS 


THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 


ADVENTURES AND 
CONFESSIONS 


IN ' fe 
Noe ir 





ADVENTURES AND 
CONF ESSIONS _ 





BY 


Deine Ne LYON ‘PHELPS 


LAMPSON P SOR LISH LITERATU 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1926 


CopyrRIGHT, 1926, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 





COPYRIGHT, 1925, 1926, BY 
CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 





Printed in the United States of America 


THIS BOOK IS 
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
TO THE 
PEOPLE OF THE 
MICHIGAN THUMB 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/adventuresconfesOOphel 


PREFACE 
This book is called ‘‘Adventures and Confes- 


sions’ because I regard religious faith, when 
founded on reason, as primarily an adventure; and 
although the word is overworked nowadays, I can 
think of no other equally accurate. All books are 
confessional; this one very much so. 


Wie Pe 
Yale University, 
Tuesday, 5 October, 1926. 


Ge Wha Ue eran A iy 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
WPADVEN TURES Avene erro eh kite Me ek ree 3 

MIME ALIVATION 3.30 {font e ee rene a Pe oe ae oe 24 
ily STERN GORS 0 AR SSM ener sh en OC RAR R INI, Ye rs Al 
MAN MPE LOR DEN Fra a, he tvele tierce cae Oar & OINee eae tah ty Gat ooe 59 
INA Fe Ea or ae OB PE ER SA 76 
MAPLE US TET Ros fase es ctr are cole dc aRotl ae oP Ase Ree 93 
BMA UMEV OMEN te tela. 94:2 hss) wile dels abe ware e merereereles 112 
REN TERE UDR a werent tatu te sialesie oletels gh emeren cle 129 
MRP RTA NOL 91.5.0 cess rast isla toes cles entre Ser a eae 144 
POU ATIMOMENT Uc schhnl eo ctee sence a atile le ae, a Charest 161 
POPURIITIGUEITR ci Aen oiled late Gees ae eaten 178 
TE IUESCIEN Caer: g's Way Crete. LEST are teny aelchh ie ard we 193 


bY he 
My \ a 


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PF 

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an) 7 





ADVENTURES AND 
CONFESSIONS 





ADVENTURE 


This morning I woke at four o’clock from an ab- 
surd and artificial dream, and by way of obtaining 
a proper contrast, went to the windows and looked 
at the stars. Above a row of dark poplars, Venus 
was playing with incomparable brilliancy the role 
of morning star; Mars was ruddily glowing in the 
south-west; the lesser lights were burning in their 
regular and appointed places. The North wind, 
which had blown fresh in the evening, had fallen; 
the cocks had not yet begun to crow; no sound 
reached my ears; in the silent and cloudless air the 
celestial machinery performed its work with noiseless 
precision. 

It is unfortunate that there are so many incurious 
people to whom the sky is meaningless. When out- 
doors at night, on sea or land, all they notice 
is that it is raining, or foggy, or cloudy, or clear; 
and if they glance up when the stars are shining, 
all they know is that some points are brighter than 
others; when by the expenditure of a dollar in 
money and three hours in time, they could learn 
enough of the names, places, and movements of the 

3 


4 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


constellations to make every clear sky interesting. 
It would be more than interesting, it would be 
friendly; for one would recognise aloft the familiar 
faces. ‘Those that one sees at ten o’clock on Jan- 
uary fifth will be there again the next January fifth, 
arriving with a punctuality merely imagined by 
railway directors. The summer and winter stars 
keep to their time-table, with an accuracy unreached 
by any man-made system. For even if the material- 
istic anthropologists were correct, and man had 
made God, man certainly did not make the stars. 
Yet the works of man are clever and ingenious, 
and definite results fall from his constructions in 
a fashion that to a former age would have seemed 
miraculous. We do well not only to pay homage 
to great inventors, but to estimate their ability by 
their productions. Suppose one saw for the first 
time a girl playing an adding-machine, a sight to- 
day so familiar as to attract no attention; suppose 
one received from the machine a broad column of 
figures added accurately and with a speed so great 
as to arouse that kind of helpless smile that we 
bestow on masters of legerdemain. Could any 
philosopher persuade the witness that the result 
was a fluke? No, one feels sure that the right 
answer did not come by chance; there was intention 
behind the machine. And now suppose that an- 
other philosopher tried to convince us that the 
man who made the machine was stupid, lacking 
intelligence and foresight. I think we should reply 


ADVENTURE F 


that although we never saw the inventor and had 
no notion of his personal appearance, the machine 
indicates such ability, patience, imagination, con- 
structive skill,, that whoever made it must have 
had a remarkable mind. 

Yet the difference in complexity between the most 
intricate works of man and the stellar system is so 
vast that in comparison the finest human ingenuity 
seems crude. 

Let us never forget the tremendousness of the 
ordinary. Familiarity with great things breeds con- 
tempt only in contemptible minds. We live every 
moment amid forces so colossal that the imagination 
boggles at them. Since I began to write this essay 
I have travelled millions of miles in space. Since 
I began to write this sentence I have been whirled 
many miles at terrific velocity. Yet I have felt no 
giddiness and no Jar; the shock-absorbers are 
evidently quite superior to those on any automobile. 
The speed is so much greater that the car would 
appear to be going backward; yet I feel at ease and 
serene. ‘The distance of the stars from the globe 
I inhabit is so vast that astronomers have to measure 
it in light-years; you can calculate the unit of meas- 
ure by remembering that light travels about 
200,000 miles a second. Some of the individual 
stars are spheres of such size as to be 300,000,000 
miles in diameter. Yet every one is kept in its 
place as easily as you hold a tennis ball. 

It appears to me not unreasonable to infer that 


6 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


the regularity and precision of these colossal forces 
indicate a mentality so great that in comparison the 
mind of Edison 1s puny. 

In the year 1924 we celebrated the two hundredth 
anniversary of the birth of a man, who, strange 
as it may seem, spent his life thinking. With many 
people today, thinking has become almost a lost art. 
There is an enormous diffusion of culture; everybody 
reads. Reading is sometimes hostile to thought. 
If we have half an hour to spare, we do not medi- 
tate; we reach for a newspaper or a magazine or 
for something to “occupy” our minds. How many 
who read this article have in the last month done 
any orderly thinking? ‘To be busy is not neces- 
sarily a profitable occupation. Indeed to think 
seriously is a difficult effort; to many the effort is as 
painful as it is strange. 

Immanuel Kant, a little German about five feet 
high, was born in a little town in 1724. At an 
early age he began to think, which soon became a 
habit. It was his custom to rise at five o’clock and 
think for two hours. He had no apparatus; there 
was nothing in his hands. He sat and thought; he 
did not, like the woman, just sit. After he had 
spent a good many years, he wrote a book. It is 
natural to suppose that such a book, the fruit of in- 
numerable hours of severe and productive medita- 
tion, would be valuable; it was; it is. 

When you meet a man who has just spent a year 
in travel, you ask him, ‘“‘Of all the things you have 


ADVENTURE : 


_ seen abroad, what is the one thing that impressed 
you the most?” So, if I had met Kant, I should have 
asked him, “Of all the thoughts that have passed 
through your mind, what seems to you the great- 
est?’ Fortunately it is not necessary to meet him. 
He told us. He wrote, in the same deliberate and 
reflective and word-weighing manner that character- 
ised his utterances, 


Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and 
awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the 
starry heavens without and the moral law within. 


It is the second that seems at first sight most as- 
tonishing. ‘That the individual human being, who 
seems so transitory, so perishable, at the mercy of 
a fever germ or a street accident, to whom any day 
may bring an irremediable disaster, whose life his- 
tory is largely a record of pettiness and folly, when 
it is no worse, that every individual man or woman 
should have something in his mind equal in sublimity 
to the starry skies, this makes one pause and won- 
der. Yet this philosopher, after years of thought, 
placed us on an equality with the majestic heavens. 

It is amusing sometimes to read materialistic 
philosophy written to prove the insignificance of 
men and women on an insignificant planet; for the 
person who writes it is so cock-sure of himself. 

Is there something in every one, no matter how 
impuissant he may be, as sublime and as awe-inspir- 


§ ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


ing as the starry vault? Let us consider the moral 
law. 

There are those who say all our actions are gov- 
erned by selfishness, that there is no such thing as 
altruism or self-sacrifice; hence no heroism. I read 
the newspapers morning and evening, for the first 
page of every newspaper is a record of the crimes, 
follies, disasters of humanity, which, however, some- 
times disclose the highest qualities conceivable. 

I read of a hotel fire, where an elevator-boy, who 
may have seemed irredeemably vulgar in his man- 
ners and language, kept on driving his lift to the 
upper floors, saving human lives, and finally losing 
his own, dying in agonising torture. What made 
him send his machine up into that hell of flame? 
Did he wish to die? Was not life sweet to him? 
What force impelled him, a force so much greater 
than his fear of death? It was the moral law, ‘“‘the 
likest God within the soul,” and I say that that 
gamin is as sublime as the stars. When the Titanic 
went down, she carried with her New York million- 
aires, who had given their lives for foreign steward- 
esses. When some economists read of this, they 
called it foolishly quixotic; the lives of these men 
of huge affairs were vastly more important than 
the lives of ignorant women who cleaned pots and 
swept rooms. But these men knew that it was their 
duty to protect those who were physically weaker 
than they; and in the presence of disaster and mor- 
tal peril, they forgot their wealth and their im- 


ADVENTURE 9 


portance; they remembered only that they were 
men, and there were women to save. We call it 
the law of the sea. It is the moral law. 

I read in the newspaper that two steamers came 
into collision one dark night off the Virginian capes. 
The rammed vessel was swiftly sinking. A male 
passenger came on deck, carrying a life-preserver; 
he saw a woman without one, and he offered her his, 
as lightly as a man would offer a seat to a woman 
on a street-car. She said, “What will you do?” 
And he replied easily, “Oh, I can get another.” 
He knew he could not; he lied like a gentleman, as 
it is in certain emergencies the duty of a gentleman 
to lie. She was saved; he was lost. She did not 
know even the name of her saviour, nor does any- 
one else. No one can read that incident without 
a thrill; without feeling that not only did that black 
night reveal a hero, but that the whole level of hu- 
man capacity has been raised. He threw away his 
life with a careless gesture. 


As when a thundrous midnight, with black air 
That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell, 
Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed 
Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides 
Immensity of sweetness. 


The World War, with all its filth and degradation, 
brought out individual deeds of self-sacrifice which 
are perhaps worth more than the victory of any 
nation. 


10 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


As the forces of the stellar universe reveal the 
working of an infinite mind, so the forces of the 
moral law reveal some Eternal Principle. It is 
my belief that the laws of Nature and the laws of 
Character have the same Origin, and flow from the 
same source. 

But if the Stars and the Moral Law are so im- 
pressive, why aren’t we all religious? 

Well, apart from the indifference to religion 
which is characteristic of so many men and women 
whose time is completely taken up with work and 
recreation, whose minds and ambitions are con- 
cerned wholly with mundane and bodily affairs, 
there are two great obstacles to religious faith. 
Those who, like me, are loyal, devoted, joyful, pas- 
sionate adherents of Christianity must not blink 
these difficulties or minimise their import. You 
cannot solve a problem by forgetting it, or by pre- 
tending it does not exist. An intelligent and sincere 
Christian is not one who has no doubts; he is one, 
who, after giving every consideration to adverse 
arguments, finds that after all, his faith is greater 
than his scepticism. 

I shall mention two of the most obvious and 
most common objections brought against Christian 
belief. 

First, the immense amount of injustice, evil, 
cruelty, pain and suffering in the world, Sorrow 
and agony are not illusions: there is nothing in life 
more real. No one in a city can walk six blocks 


ADVENTURE II 


without seeing things that ought to be relieved or 
improved. No one has ever solved the problem of 
evil and no one ever will; no question comes earlier 
to the lips of anyone who thinks, than the query of 
how God can possibly be omnipotent and benevo- 
lent, and allow such conditions to exist or to con- 
‘tinue. Because of the World War, many lost their 
religious faith. You may say in that case they did 
not have much to lose. No, but they lost all they 
had. 

If every sunrise brings every living man nearer 
nothing, then the world is run at a loss. The deficit 
indeed is so large that the Mind controlling the 
stars shows in practical business less ability than 
a bootblack. If Henry Ford ran his factories as 
this world is managed, he would soon become bank- 
rupt. If the output of Ford cars were as streaky 
and uncertain in quality as the output of human 
babies, the production would cease. Babies, how- 
ever, continue to multiply; if life be not an asset, 
it is a tragedy. 

The Founder of Christianity clearly recognised 
that evil permeated everywhere the conditions of 
life, and he predicted that it would continue to do 
so for an indefinite period. ‘The Christian religion 
offers its followers no escape or immunity from 
evil; it supplies them with sufficient force to fight it. 

If life is really a journey, if we are not only trav- 
elling, but travelling some-whither, and if the goal 
of that journey be splendid, then, after the goal is 


12 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


reached, the sufferings on the way, although they are 
real and terrible, will be of no account at all, will 
trouble the traveller no more than a scar. Suppose 
you wished to visit some friend in equatorial Africa. 
The route you take is full of peril, full of acute 
suffering; finally you arrive; you greet him with de- 
light. He may enquire sympathetically, ‘‘Didn’t 
you have many painful experiences?” ‘Why, yes, 
I suffered much and often; and apart from bodily 
pain and privation, there were times when I was 
shaken by fear, even paralysed by despair. But I 
don’t care anything about all that now/ Here we 
are together!” ‘Then perhaps he enquires concern- 
ing the road you selected, and exclaims in surprise 
and pity, ‘“‘Why, that was the worst possible route! 
Didn’t you know there was an easier trail?” ‘No, 
I took the only one I knew.”’ ‘But don’t you wish 
that you had come by an easier and safer path?” 
“Why, no, I don’t particularly care now what road I 
took. Here we are together!” 

The pain, fear, and torment were real and terri- 
fying; but after one has reached the desired haven, 
the tempest becomes only a toothless memory. 


Could we by a wish 
Have what we will and get the future now, 
Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 


The second great obstacle in the way of religious 
faith is Uncertainty. If Christianity is true, why 
does God leave us in such perplexity and doubt? 


ADVENTURE 13 


Why did he not reveal Himself in such a manner 
as to be unmistakable? It will be remembered that 
one man said that whoever God was, He was not 
a gentleman; for no gentleman would leave another 
in the dark as to his meaning and intentions. 


It’s strange that God should fash to frame 
The yearth and lift sae hie, 

An’ clean forget to explain the same 
To a gentleman like me. 


Well, is the relation between us and God exactly 
like that of one gentleman to another? Are we 
on equal planes of intelligence? 

When Henry Howard Furness was over eighty 
years of age, I heard him give one of his famous 
readings from Shakespeare. He read a familiar 
passage from King Henry V. ‘Then he paused and 
asked the air, ‘‘Now just exactly what did Shake- 
speare mean by that passage?” He paused again, 
and asked, “But how can my puny mind grasp the 
ideas in a mind like that of William Shakespeare ?”’ 

Furness was one of the leading Shakespearian 
scholars in the world. He had devoted a long life 
to this one author; yet he felt that the distance be- 
tween his mind and that of the poet was so great 
that it could not be bridged. Yet we think we ought 
to understand the Supreme Intelligence. 

Suppose, with no knowledge of harmony and 
counterpoint, and with inability to play any instru- 
ment, you insisted that a musician must explain 


14 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


to you the construction of one of Beethoven’s sym- 
phonies. Suppose Einstein tried to explain his 
theory of relativity to a hen. The distance between . 
the mind of a hen and the mind of Einstein is not 
so vast as that between the human and divine in- 
telligence. 

Even in so close a relation as that between parents 
and children, the former sometimes have to leave 
the latter not only in perplexity, but with a rankling 
sense of injustice. 

I believe that if the complete meaning of the 
starry universe should suddenly be plainly revealed 
to us, we should lose our minds; not because of its 
horror or tragic import, but because of its over- 
whelming immensity. Our brains would crack like 
an eggshell. 

Sometimes, where men are repairing something 
in a road, there is a sign 


* 


DO NOT LOOK AT THIS LIGHT. — 


Of course everybody immediately tries to look, and 
immediately desists. One cannot see in the dark, 
but too much light is more dangerous for the eyes 
than darkness. 

Our intelligence in its present state is no more 
adapted to grasp the meaning of the universe, than 
a baby is fit to lift a safe. 

But the Uncertainty is precisely what makes life 
interesting. Here is where and how the Christian 
religion becomes an ADVENTURE. What? yeu re- 


ADVENTURE 15 


fuse to follow Christ because you are not certain 
of the outcome? What would you think of a man 
who should refuse to play any game unless he were 
assured in advance of victory? What would you 
think of a man who refused to enter upon any 
course of action unless it could be proved to him in 
advance that his efforts would be rewarded with 
success? We not only make unreasonable demands 
upon religion, but if they were granted, all the zest 
of life would be lost. 

The very last word to apply to the Christian re- 
ligion is the word used by its enemies—an anzs- 
thetic. Christianity is not an anesthetic; it is indeed 
the opposite. It is a tonic, a stimulant, a driving 
force. It is true that Christian faith is an immense 
solace and comfort to those who are old, solitary, 
sick, and feeble; but in the main Christian faith is 
for active boys and girls, for strong-hearted men 
and women, who are bearing the burden and heat 
of the day. We should not become Christians 
because we are afraid we may die, but because we 
expect to live and do some good in the world. We 
are voyagers who want a rudder for the ship and 
a port to reach. We want life to mean something. 

To the true Christian every day is exciting, every 
day isanadventure. ‘There are times of sorrow and 
heartbreak, but there are no times of dullness 
and boredom. To one who believes in God’s reve- 
lation in Christ, and who therefore believes in his 
own destiny, there can be nothing trivial. Every- 


16 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


thing counts. You cannot go to the office or the 
shop, you cannot hear a piece of music or read a 
novel, without undergoing an experience that helps 
to shape the whole course of life. And who knows 
but in today’s regular work some event of momen- 
tous importance may happen? And who can tell 
in reading a novel but that on page 287 some phrase 
may permanently affect his character? 

The Adventure is exactly where Fair comes in. 
In every important emergency of life and in every 
undertaking of any consequence, we act not on 
knowledge, but on faith. Let us not demand 
knowledge in religion, when we never have it in 
business, in marriage, in politics, and in investments. 
What is Faith? 

Some say that the farmer has faith when he plants 
seed in the Autumn that something will come up 
in the Spring. Such a remark betrays ignorance of 
faith. Faith is more difficult and exacting. The 
farmer in that instance has knowledge, not faith. 
He would be a fool if he did not expect something 
to come up. It came up last year. His father had 
the same experience, and his neighbours. He is 
treading no new path, sailing no uncharted sea, but 
walking on a perfectly safe road, trodden by millions 
of feet before him. 

Columbus had Faith when he sailed West, and 
kept sailing West. What lent particular zest to 
his voyage was the possibility of defeat, disaster, 
disgrace, and death. But there was also the possi- 


ADVENTURE 17 


bility of victory. He believed there was land, and 
that he could find it by sailing West. If he had 
known before starting that he should find it, the 
excitement of the excursion would have evaporated. 
Had he known that he would die before reaching it, 
he would not have started at all. But the combina- 
tion of the Prize and the Risk was what appealed 
to his bold, adventurous heart. 

Faith was what inspired Shackleton, Amundsen, 
and that hero of heroes, Captain Scott. Victory or 
death, possibly both; anyhow, a great prize and a 
terrible peril. ‘hey tried for one and risked the 
other. 

In the more ordinary experiences of everyday 
life, it is faith that guides us into every interesting 
experiment. If a boy is free to choose, why does 
he choose one college rather than another? He 
does not know it is the best; no one can prove it; 
he may die there of illness, or his character may be 
injured; he cannot see into the future, but he goes 
there on faith. Every choice is an act of faith. 
When, upon graduation, he chooses a profession or 
occupation, he does not know what he is doing; he 
may choose the line of work which will be the worst 
possible for his ability and temperament. But he 
goes ahead on faith, doing the best he can in the 
darkness. Marriage is a supreme act of faith. 
When a girl leaves the security of her home, and 
unites her fortune and life and chance of happiness 
with a man whom she cannot know until she has 


18 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


lived with him, she acts on faith. Many marriages 
result in disaster; but the vast majority of people 
are willing to try the experiment. It is an adven- 
ture, entered upon by faith. ... And finally 
comes Death, the most tremendous adventure of all. 

On the deck of the Lusitania, in 1915, stood 
Charles Frohman. He had spent his life taking 
chances, and was now taking another. Theatrical 
management is one of the most risky and speculative 
of all forms of business, for no one has ever been 
able with certainty to predict the fate of a new play. 
The majority fail, and failure means not only dis- 
appointment, and the loss of expected profits, but 
the loss of everything already invested, for the 
curtain cannot rise until there has been a large ex- 
penditure. On the other hand, a successful play 
is a fortune. Charles Frohman was on his way to 
Europe, his head full of new plans for the exten- 
sion of his theatrical undertaking abroad. ‘The 
Lusitania began to sink, and some one said to him, 
‘Mr. Frohman, are you afraid to die?’ He smiled, 
and replied, ‘“Why, I have always looked upon 
death as the greatest adventure in life.’ Spoken 
like the brave man he was. 

As I write these words, America is in the midst 
of the excitement of a Presidential campaign. Every 
man and woman who votes next November will 
accomplish an act of pure faith. No one can tell 
whether his vote may not be adverse to the best 
interests of the country he loves; no one has any 


ADVENTURE 19 


knowledge of the future. Voting is always done on 
faith. Now, because of the lack of knowledge, is 
the country full of political agnostics? Because a 
man cannot know whether the ticket he prefers is 
the right one, does he decide to abstain from vot- 
ing? By no means. He not only votes enthusias- 
tically, positively, dogmatically, he is usually so 
cock-sure that he endeavours to induce others to 
follow him. There are many who would gladly cast 
the ballot for the whole nation. It is pure faith. 
My faith in God may not always be as strong and 
unclouded as I wish it were, but I have more faith 
in Jesus Christ than I have in the Republican party, 
or in the Democratic party, or in any party or in 
any candidate. It seems to me singular that so 
many people should have no faith in God and ex- 
hibit such touching, childlike faith in a political 
leader. 

People never become excited on matters of 
knowledge, but only on faith. If a man should ask 
me, ‘‘Do you believe that two and two make four?” 
I should reply, ‘‘No, I don’t believe it; I know it.” 
Suppose he should say, “Well, you are wrong; they 
really make five.’ Should I argue with him? Of 
course not. I don’t waste my time talking with a 
madman. ‘Have it your own way, if you like.” 

You could never induce England and Germany 
to fight on this proposition: a straight line is the 
shortest distance between two points. Matters of 
knowledge quickly lose interest, their power to 


20 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


appeal. They become commonplaces. So long as 
there was doubt whether a machine heavier-than- 
air could fly, the proposition and the experiment 
were both amazingly interesting. Now airplanes 
fly over golf-courses, and even the caddies do not 
raise their heads, but continue their ever-animated 
conversations. ‘There is no interest without the pos- 
sibility of error and disaster. 

Men will not fight on matters of knowledge. But 
they will fight for their family, their friends, their 
college, their country, and their religion. 

Now as the chance of failure makes every adven- 
ture attractive, so the possibility of delusion makes 
Christianity appealing. To be absolutely honest, 
I must admit that the Christian religion may be a 
myth, my hopes in it only dust, my destiny annihi- 
lation. But my whole life is staked on the belief 
that it is true. I have more faith in Christ than 
in any other person or thing. I have directed all 
my life’s activities with the faith that he was divine. 
To use a vulgar phrase, if a man bets all he has, 
the shirt on his back, you cannot demand more of 
him than that. The most reasonable explanation 
of the person of Christ and of his history is that he 
revealed God. With that basis, I go ahead on faith. 

Therefore if you ask me, ‘Do you believe in the 
Son of God?” I answer firmly, “Yes.” ‘Do you 
believe in the future life?” “Yes.” “Do you be- 
lieve that you will see again your father and 
mother?” ‘Yes.’ ‘How sure are you of this?” 


ADVENTURE 21 


“Well, I am surer of this than of anything that can- 
not be proved.” “Are you as sure of the future life 
as that two and two make four?” And without 
hesitation, I reply, ‘‘No; not so sure as that.” 
However, it seems to me more reasonable than not 
to believe it. I am not afraid. I am going ahead. 
I did not enlist in the service of Christ as a camp- 
follower, but as a soldier. Be it glory or be it 
death, I am glad I enlisted. 

John Quincy Adams, who of all our Presidents 
was the greatest scholar, and who, in addition, was 
so austere that it is impossible to imagine him in a 
light-hearted mood, this stern and learned man, 
every night in the White House kneeled down and 
said the prayer his mother taught him as a child: 


Now I lay me down to sleep, 

I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 
If I should die before I wake, 

I pray the Lord my soul to take. 


Although the prayer has been sanctified by thou- 
sands of innocent lips, and although the iron-sided 
Adams found it good enough for him, I heard a 
version whose author I know not, which I like much 
better, because it expresses exactly my own attitude. 


Now I lay me down to sleep, 

I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 
And wake I soon or wake I never, 
I give my soul to Christ forever! 


22 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


In addition to the important fact that there can 
be no real interest in religion without uncertainty, 
there can also be no virtue. Uncertainty makes the 
Christian adventure exciting; and it is the only basis 
of conduct. If the truth of religion were demon- 
strable, and the way to win heaven were plainly 
charted, there could be no goodness at all. If we 
knew that by abstaining from certain things—which 
is still some persons’ notion of morality—if we 
knew that by not smoking, drinking, dancing, kiss- 
ing, lying, cheating, we could win immortal life, 
then there would be no virtue at all. There would 
simply be calculation. Heaven would be exclusively 
occupied by hard-headed, prudent business men; 
they would get it all. The charming, gracious, 
lovely men and women of impulse would be in hell. 

Suppose in a room I dropped a ten-dollar bill, 
and someone started to pick it up. Suppose I re- 
minded him that if he took it, it would be all he 
would receive. But if he would let it alone, in two 
months he would receive a million dollars. Suppose 
I could demonstrate this as a certainty. Of course 
he would refrain from the pleasure of seizing the 
ten-dollar bill. Now suppose he should pride him- 
self on his superior virtue, on the nobility and self- 
sacrifice of his character, on his freedom from the 
sin of avarice. ‘You saw me? I had the chance 
to immediately enjoy ten dollars. I refused it. 
My mind is set on higher things.” What should 
we think of such sanctimonious arrogance? 


ADVENTURE 23 


No, Christianity is the Adventure, the Supreme 
Adventure. We do not know the outcome. But 
we know we are following the only person in history 
who seems like God. If he is living, it is our hope 
that some day we shall see him. If he shared the 
fate of flies and worms, then that is good enough 
for us. We want to be where he is. 

But as all his words were words of courage and 
hope and triumph, as his way of life can be tried 
and tested and is always found good and productive, 
we follow him not in fear and doubt, but in faith. 
Let the future take care of itself. That is what 
he particularly advised. 


II 
SALVATION 


Nearly all the books I read ask questions with- 
out answering them; and indeed it requires no 
ability, no ingenuity, and no experience to ask 
difficult questions. Every child has asked its mother 
questions that learned philosophers and scientists 
have used up their lives trying to answer. The Bible 
differs from most books in its definite, positive re- 
plies to the most vital, eager enquiries from the 
eternally hungry human heart. 

Socrates spent his days asking searching ques- 
tions; Jesus came into the world not to ask, but to 
answer. [he word Gospel means Good News; he 
brought it. There was no shadow of scepticism, no 
penumbra of uncertainty in his mind, or in the tones 
of his bold, confident, authoritative voice. He was 
not a denier; he was an afhirmer. How amazing, 
in this world of torturing doubt and perplexity, 
where nearly every mind is in conflict not only with 
others, but with itself, to hear such positive state- 
ments as these: 


I am the living bread which came down from heaven. 
The water that I shall give him shall be to him a well of 
water springing up into everlasting life. 
24 


SALVATION 25 


I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live. 

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not 
so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. 


When Mrs. Humphry Ward was talking to 
Walter Pater about her scepticism and her disbelief 
in the divinity of Christ, supposing that he shared 
her views, she was startled by his reply. He told 
her that he could not agree with her. ‘There are 
such mysterious things. ‘Take that saying, ‘Come 
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.’ 
How can you explain that? There is a mystery in 
it—a something supernatural.” 

What is the meaning of Salvation by Faith? 
What is Salvation? how are we saved by faith? and 
from what disaster are we saved? 

That we can be saved by faith is affirmed posi- 
tively by Jesus, and reafirmed by Paul. 

This is the work of God, that ye believe on him 
whom he hath sent. When the jailer came to Paul 
and Silas, he asked a question, the term of address 
showing immense respect for his prisoners: Sirs, 
what must I do to be saved? He received an imme- 
diate, unhesitating, and definite reply: Believe on 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. 

What must I do to be saved? 

The poor fellow thought he had to do something. 
His experience of life, a sufficiently common one, had 


26 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


taught him that good things were not to be had for 
the asking. Nobody was giving away anything de- 
sirable. If one wanted anything badly, one must 
be prepared to pay money for it, or to work for 
it, or to make some special sacrifice for it. Thus 
he must have been astounded when he was told 
merely to believe. 

The statement that salvation would come by faith 
was not only a new idea to the jailer, but it exploded 
a whole accumulation of superstitions, to which mil- 
lions of individuals still cling in the twentieth cen- 
tury. There is nothing possible that men would not 
do if by doing it they could be saved. Any amount 
of painful effort, any amount of galling sacrifice, 
would be endured with patience, if the sufferer be- 
lieved that by such means he could be saved. 

Did you ever try to walk on your bare knees in 
gravel? It is excessively uncomfortable, and an 
exceedingly inefficient and therefore silly method of 
locomotion; yet there are many who have tried it 
and gone long distances in order to attain salvation. 

I mention this as only one of any number of bodily 
sacrifices that people have undergone; and most 
methods of religion are based fundamentally on a 
superstition, a superstition that is all but universal, 
and that is characteristic of every religion except 
Christianity. When I say Christianity, I mean the 
teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, not theological 
systems built upon them. 


SALVATION 27 


What is this superstition? It is the superstition 
that God is against us. 

You will find this particular brand of pessimism 
at the basis of nearly all the world’s religions, at 
the basis of many minds that have ceased to believe 
in any religion, and indeed it is an almost ineradi- 
cable element in human nature. 

If I can accomplish only one thing by this essay, 
I wish to accomplish this. I wish to drive out this 
particular superstition from the mind of every one 
who reads these pages, so that those who began 
this essay in the grasp of this superstition will shake 
it off; and stand up and walk like free men and 
women. The vast majority of educated and other- 
wise intelligent men and women are still in the 
bondage of this myth, no matter what their per- 
sonal religion may be. 

An old and very familiar idea in the various re- 
ligions of the world is that God is against us, and 
must be pacified. Although such an idea is un- 
worthy of man, and an insult to God, it is exceed- 
ingly common. 

Many anti-Christians today talk cantingly of the 
old free and sunny-hearted Greeks, and of the 
beauty of their religion. As a matter of fact, if the 
Greek gods were alive today, they would all be in 
jail. The Greek idea of Fate was profoundly pes- 
simistic. ‘“The Gods often make the wrong way 
seem the right way to a man, in order that they may 
lead him to destruction.” 


28 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


“Lead us not into temptation” may be difficult to 
explain—but there is no difficulty in explaining the 
Greek idea. The gods played with helpless hu- 
manity. 

Christian missionaries have found natives who, 
not content with the inescapable miseries and sor- 
rows and privations of life, were adding to their 
already intolerable burdens by religion. ‘They lac- 
erated themselves, they encouraged sores and dis- 
eases, they sacrificed their lives and sometimes 
something more precious. Mothers have stood by 
the banks of rivers and thrown their babies into 
the stream: “Now, God, you’ve got to be good to 
me! I have given you what is dearer to me than 
my own life: I have made the supreme sacrifice; you 
cannot ask anything more!’’ These and other in- 
stances in various parts of the world and in various 
epochs of history are illustrations of the central su- 
perstition—that God is against us. 

This element of fear, more fitting for a slave 
than for a freeman, not only degrades humanity, 
but to an even lower degree it degrades God. For, 
with the assumption that God is against us goes the 
theory that he can be humoured and pacified—as 
we humour and pacify troublesome children, peev- 
ish invalids, and men who are drunk. 

If therefore we sacrifice something we enjoy, 
comfortable clothes, healthy activities, attractive 
food, cigarettes, caramels, or what not, we may turn 
aside or soften the wrath of God. The idea of 


SALVATION 29 


sacrificing SOMETHING is in all religions except the 
religion taught by Jesus; in this indeed there is the 
element of sacrifice, but of a different nature. 

Worship itself should never have the element of 
fear; worship should be the glad, spontaneous ex- 
pression of the heart, as joyful and free from terror 
as greeting the sunshine. 

One day I stood on the front platform of a street- 
car in St. Petersburg; every time we passed a 
church, which was often, the motorman took off his 
cap three times. Now if he had saluted happily and 
cheerfully, like meeting a friend, it would have been 
pleasant to contemplate. But he took off his cap 
as though he were warding off the evil eye, as 
though he were trying to prevent misfortune; as 
though it were necessary to take it off three times, 
for if he doffed it only twice, who knew what might 
happen? 

In speaking of the universal custom of sacrificing 
certain things that one enjoys in order to pacify 
God, I am not attacking the customs of fasting and 
penance in the Catholic Church, any more than I 
attack High Church Protestants for the use of very 
tall candles. Although I do not fast myself, and care 
nothing for the height of a candle, I perfectly under- 
stand that these are not superstitions, but are forms 
of worship; they assist those who follow these cus- 
toms to concentrate their minds on spiritual things. 
It is not the practice of anything, but the motive, 
that Iam considering. When the motive is fear, or 


30 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


the belief that God can be pacified, it is rank su- 
perstition. 

The superstition that God is against us and that 
his anger may be if not appeased, at least diverted, 
by doing certain things, lingers in the minds of many 
persons who look upon themselves as emancipated 
from religion. I believe that the one superstition 
that lives after all others have died is this: I am 
quite certain that it is at this moment living in the 
minds of some who are reading this page. 

There are many otherwise intelligent men and 
women who would not dare to say ‘I haven’t had 
an automobile accident in my life,” without touch- 
ing wood. 

I do not know how many times I myself have 
made a similar remark, but invariably some one 
has hastily urged that I touch wood. Well, I will 
not touch wood, for it is inconceivable to me that 
touching wood can have any rational relation to 
my well-being. ‘There are many who will touch 
wood smilingly, half-jokingly perhaps, but they 
will touch it! They would not dare to omit the 
ceremony. 

This is the same old superstition which is at the 
basis of so many of the world’s religions; and it 
is unworthy of a clear, rational mind. It is un- 
worthy of any free man or woman. 

There goes with it an even more degrading super- 
stition—that if you have been enjoying good health 
or good fortune or both, it is not safe to mention 


SALVATION 31 


it aloud. Many a person has said, “I haven’t had 
a cold this winter!” Next morning he wakes up, 
snufiling, and he says, “‘Confound it! why didn’t I 
keep my mouth shut? I was getting along all right, 
but of course I had to be fool enough to boast about 
it, and now you see what I’ve got!” 

This is a superstition connected with a degrading 
religion. ‘The idea is that if you are happy, look 
out—God may notice you, and then he will put you 
where you belong. Don’t sing before breakfast, 
don’t laugh too loud, and above all, never admit 
that all is well. It won't be if you do. Many 
farmers, all of whom are more or less dependent on 
the weather, are very careful not to afirm anything 
optimistic. When their crops are exactly right, 
and everything is going perfectly well, and you ask 
them as to the state of their affairs, their most jubi- 
lant reply is ‘‘Can’t complain.” Anything more 
might be dangerous. 

There are persons who are not Catholics, not 
subject to any church discipline, who will give up 
cigarettes or chocolates for a brief period. Is it 
possible that Almighty God can be interested or 
gratified? It is the heart, not the candy, that should 
be surrendered. 

This familiar superstition of sacrificing SOME- 
THING to an otherwise implacable Tyrant leads to 
gross and vulgar bargaining. In times of stress and 
danger, in times when some member of the family 


32 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


is sick—‘‘O God, if you will answer this prayer, I 
will do so and so, and give up so and so.” 

The teachings of Jesus are contrary to these vul- 
gar ideas. He told us that God is love, that we are 
His children, that we cannot serve Him or please 
Him by giving up creature comforts, but by giving 
up our hearts. This is the sacrifice demanded by 
Christianity. It is the giving up, not of bonbons, 
but of the Self, of the Will, of the Mind, of the 
Personality. Let us never forget that the essence of 
religion as he taught it is to love God and love man; 
and that to love God and to love man is more than 
all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices. 

Suppose a husband gave his wife a fine house, a 
fine automobile, a large monthly allowance, and 
gave his heart to another woman, would his wife 
regard him as a good and faithful husband? 

We are saved by faith, by really believing in 
Jesus as the Son of God. So long as we really and 
truly believe that, our lives are on that plane, and 
are thus better, are saved. Can a man be saved by 
faith? Why, of course he can. Many a man has 
been saved from vice and unworthiness by believing 
in one good woman. Many boys have been saved 
by believing in one good man. Countless millions 
of soldiers have given their lives and found the nec- 
essary courage to do it by faith in a flag. Belief is 
the foundation of conduct; faith is the motive power 
of action. Jean Valjean was transformed from a 


SALVATION 33 


criminal into a noble and beneficent character by 
the life and words of the good Bishop. 

What is it to have faith? Is it to have faith at 
one critical moment or is it to have faith as a daily 
source of action? Is faith a stimulant or is it a 
necessary diet? 

Although I belong to the evangelical branch of 
the Protestant Church, I think our doctrine of con- 
version needs in practise some modification. The 
old division between the ranks of the ‘“‘saved” and 
the “unsaved”’ was not, I think, always founded on 
a wise or verifiable basis. ‘The old idea was that 
at a certain moment in his life every man must have 
had an identical experience, by which he knew that 
at that moment he passed from the ranks of the un- 
saved to the saved, and that thenceforth and for- 
evermore he was not only saved, but safe—that, I 
think, was one of the numerous superstitions of an 
artificial theology. 

I have lately been reading a little book which I 
wish every intelligent Catholic and Protestant would 
read; for while it is not in the least necessary that 
Catholics and Protestants should unite to form one 
church, their forms of worship and their ecclesiasti- 
cal organisation being so different, it is necessary 
that they should be united in spirit, with mutual 
respect and admiration and love. This book is by 
the Reverend Oliver Chase Quick, and is called 
Catholic and Protestant Elements in Christianity. 
The object of the book is not to draw Protestants 


34 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


and Catholics together in ritual, or in ceremonies, 
but in mutual understanding. What the author says 
about conversion proves that the very individualism 
on which we Protestants pride ourselves has some- 
times led to insistence on a uniformity which is con- 
trary to the facts of human nature and which is not 
at all necessary to a truly “saving faith.” 


The individualism of Protestant Christianity has taken vari- 
ous forms. In its essence it seems to be identified with the 
view that Christianity, on its subjective side, is a quite definite 
experience of the individual consciousness, which is identically 
reproduced in all those who have the right to call themselves 
Christians . . . a similar assumption that the Christian experi- 
ence must in its essence be identically the same for all, and that 
experiences which do not conform to a certain definite type can- 
not be truly Christian. . . . On the whole Protestantism, while 
allowing wide variety in the outward forms of religion or else 
taking a negative attitude towards them, has insisted strongly 
and positively on the need for a uniformity in spiritual experi- 
ence. Catholicism, while insisting strongly on conformity in 
things outward, has tolerated and even encouraged much greater 
variation in the inward apprehension of spiritual realities on the 
part of the individual soul. The very individualism of the 
Protestant may make more searching and more rigid demands 
upon the individual than any doctrine which, exalting the out- 
ward rules of the society, exacts uniformity only in outward 
compliance therewith. Individualism is not necessarily associated 


with liberty. 


I remember in my childhood that the deacons of 
the church were like diagnosticians; they examined 
all candidates to determine whether or not they 


SALVATION 35 


were ‘‘saved,”’ and that was settled by their “ex- 
perience,” which had to exhibit certain definite men- 
tal signs. There is a truth underlying this, but there 
is an error too, for spiritually human beings are very 
different. 

A true word was spoken by the Reverend Dr. 
James McGee: “We must not make it harder to 
enter the Christian Church than Christ made it to 
become His followers.” 

We are saved by faith not only by a sudden reve- 
lation, as in the case of Paul, but by a gradual yield- 
ing of the whole mind and body to the Light of the 
World. And this faith is just as necessary on any 
day fifteen years after one has joined a church, as 
it is at the moment of decision. 

I heartily believe that we are saved by faith; it 
is interesting to enquire what we are saved from? 
It used to be believed that we were saved from the 
punishment of sin. But I think this stresses the 
wrong point, and furthermore, I do not believe it 
is true. Modern students of Christianity more and 
more are insisting that it is not the punishment of 
sin from which faith in Christ saves us, but from 
sin itself, 

Now there are modernists and modernists. There 
are those critics who, by denying the Incarnation, 
take away the foundation of Christianity, and to my 
motion, make our religion a farce. There are those 
modernists, who say that although the Gospel is 
not true, we should act as if it were; which may be 


36 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


a good enough doctrine for babies and idiots, but 
will never be accepted by the majority of adult 
minds. 

There are other modernists whose whole aim is 
to get nearer to the person and teachings of Jesus 
Christ, where every ‘forward’? movement is in 
reality (in time) a movement backward, to bring 
out the Divine Teacher from the superstructure of 
human theology. This is good; for Jesus is more 
modern than we. 

I myself believe literally in the twenty-first verse 
of the first chapter of Matthew: 


for he shall save his people from their sins. 


It is impossible that we can be saved from the 
punishment of our sins. Sin and suffering are in- 
separably linked together. Punishment follows sin 
as night follows day, as Winter follows Autumn. 
We have all sinned; and every time we have sinned, 
either we or somebody else has suffered or will 
suffer. The result can no more be avoided than one 
can tear away an event from its cause. 

But there is abundance of evidence to show that 
faith in Jesus saves people from their sins. No 
human being can become impeccable; but individual 
sins have been in many cases entirely overcome by 
Christian faith. Jesus never dealt with outward 
conduct, still less with professions; but always with 
the source of conduct—the human heart. He pro- 
posed to substitute a good desire for an evil desire, 


SALVATION 37 


to grow flowers in the place of weeds. He created 
a revolution in the human mind, a new birth, so 
that the mind would not want evil things so eagerly, 
but would want something better. 

In Harold Begbie’s book, Twice Born Men, 
which Professor William James regarded with re- 
spect and admiration, there are plenty of authenti- 
cated cases where vice which had defied medical 
skill and every entreaty based on self-respect, was 
annihilated by faith in Jesus Christ. 

Many men, apparently incurable, were saved to 
themselves, to their families, and to society. The 
last words that Jesus said to the woman in the 
house of Simon the Pharisee, were these: 


Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace. 


There is surely something greater here than 
mere personal influence. One learns good manners 
by associating with ladies and gentlemen; one’s 
standards of speech and conduct are elevated by 
meeting those who are truly civilised. All good 
examples are more efficient than one may be in- 
clined to think; but something happened to that 
woman in the house of Simon that was different 
from what would have happened if Simon had been 
entertaining a gentleman who had merely spoken 
kindly to her, or who had remonstrated with his 
host for treating her contemptuously. We do not 
forget acts and words of kindness and consider- 
ation; we remain forever grateful; and sometimes 


38 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


we actually treat others better because some one 
has shown us the charm of enlightened behaviour. 

But that uninvited guest in Simon’s dining-room 
knew well enough that the Person whose head she - 
anointed and whose feet she washed with tears was 
of no common clay. She knew that for the moment 
the fashionable house, filled with luxury and refine- 
ment, was transformed into a temple of God, was 
illuminated by the Divine Presence. She was not 
saved from a life of sin ending in misery, by admira- 
tion, or by respect, or by a good example; she was 
saved by faith in the Son of God. 

The Christian religion, with its power to redeem 
men and women, depends upon the Incarnation. It 
is because Jesus was God-with-us that we have faith 
in him. I know of no other access to the Divine 
Force, I know of no other communication between 
man and God. 

Believing as I do that the whole Christian re- 
ligion depends upon the truth of the Incarnation, 
believing as I do that the Incarnation is the only 
Light of the world, I found it heartening to read 
these words in a book by one of the greatest scholars 
of our time, by one who has made a profound study 
not only of philosophy and the history of thought, 
but of comparative religions. In a little book pub- 
lished in 1924, called The Christ of the New Testa- 
ment, and written by Paul Elmer More, I find his 
conclusion to be: 


SALVATION 39 


Only, thus much I would urge: if the supposition of Chris- 
tianity be not true, then we have no sure hope of religion. 
. » . In contrast with all other religions the peculiar strength of 
Christianity is that in the Incarnation it reduces mythology to 
the simplest possible terms; every extravagance, every over- 
growth of fancy, is swept away for the bare fact that God in 
Jesus appeared among men.... To say that the dogma of 
Christianity is endangered by the comparative study of religions 
implies a gross ignorance of facts or a wilful misapprehension of 
values. ... if the divine nature has at any time in any wise 
directly revealed itself to man, if any voice shall ever reach us 
out of the infinite circle of silence, where else shall we look but 
to the words of the Gospel? Not Christianity alone is at stake 
in our acceptance or rejection of the Incarnation, but religion 
itself. 


There are perhaps many who read the story of 
the woman from the streets in the same attitude 
held by Simon; she was after all wiser than he, for 
she knew she needed salvation, and he felt no need 
for himself. There are those who read of sinners 
saved from drunkenness and from other forms of 
gross vice, with an emotion compounded only of 
curiosity and pity. This would be like going to see 
a tragedy on the stage, without realising that the 
suffering hero is tragic because he represents not 
an isolated case, but humanity. ‘The pity and fear, 
which are supposed to be the emotions chiefly 
aroused by tragic spectacles, are, in the greatest 
tragedies, pity and fear for ourselves. We all 
stand in need of salvation. 

Those who are not tempted by drunkenness and 


40 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


crime are often perhaps in greater need of salva- 
tion than the outcasts. Just as no man feels so 
ignorant as a true scholar, because his ideal of 
knowledge is high, so the same standards can be 
applied to character. Every man who is not the 
man he would like to be needs salvation. The most 
elevating, the most saving force is faith. 


If 
SIN 


Jeremiah speaks: The heart is deceitful above all things, and 
desperately wicked: who can know it? 


Jesus speaks: It must needs be that offences come: but 
woe to that man by whom the offence 
cometh! 

Paul speaks: I delight in the law of God after the in- 


ward man: but I see another law in my 
members, warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the 
law of sin which is in my members. O 
wretched man that I am! who shall de- 
liver me from the body of this death? I 
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
So then with the mind I myself serve the 
law of God: but with the flesh the law of 


Sin. 


In the poem Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic, 
Robert Browning dramatised a true story. It ap- 
pears in the little Breton town there lived a thin, 
pale girl, whose chief claim to beauty was her mag- 
nificent yellow hair. Her character was apparently 
so impeccable that to her friends and neighbours 
she seemed more saintly than human. She was de- 
vout; she was never frivolous, never angry; she 
spoke no words of slander, no words of impatience 

41 


42 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


or petulance; she took care of the sick and dying. 
When she walked along the street, her presence 
was a benediction. The Pornic people used to say 
that no matter how streaky and imperfect the char- 
acters of others were, in this girl there was cer- 
tainly no flaw. She had even on earth attained per- 
fection. There could be nothing in her life which 
she would be unwilling to have known. 

No one was surprised when she was stricken with 
tuberculosis. Every one felt that she was too an- 
gelic to remain long in this sordid world, and that 
heaven was her natural home. Before she died, she 
made this request of her parents. “I am going to 
arrange my hair exactly as I wish it to appear while 
I lie in the coffin. Lift me very carefully from the 
bed. When you are preparing my body for burial, 
on no account disturb my hair, and be equally care- 
ful when you place my corpse in the coffin, so that 
those who come to the funeral will see me exactly as 
I wish to look.” 

I dare say that when her friends heard of this 
strange request, they were secretly pleased. ‘Well, 
now, that proves that after all, she was human. 
She was proud of her lovely hair, she did have that 
faint touch of feminine coquetry, and wished even 
in the coffin to appear at her best.” 

The girl died. Her orders were scrupulously 
carried out. People bent over and kissed the white 
face, which looked like a silver wedge between the 


SIN 43 


heaps of gold. Her grave was under the floor of 
the old church. 

Years later, this pavement needed repair; and 
while workmen were busy with pick and shovel, one 
of the curious boys looking on suddenly saw some- 
thing shining in the earth. He picked it up. It was 
a gold coin! ‘The priest said, “Dig deeper!” and 
around the skull they found a fortune in gold money. 

This damnable fact proved that the heart of this 
girl, which every one had believed to be uncontam- 
inated with a single shade of impurity, was domi- 
nated by one of the most dreadful sins known to 
humanity—the sin of avarice. She was, despite all 
her other and very real virtues, a miser. Avarice is 
one of the blackest sins, because it is so wholly 
selfish. The girl was an orthodox believer; she be- 
lieved in heaven and hell; she went to church faith- 
fully, and said her prayers every day. Yet her con- 
suming lust for money was so terrible, so unconquer- 
able, that at the very last it triumphed over her re- 
ligious faith, over all the teachings she had believed 
in from birth, over her hopes of heaven, over her 
fears of hell. She could not relinquish the gold 
which she had coveted and amassed secretly during 
the years of her life; she must take it with her into 
the silent grave. 

Was the girl a hypocrite? I don’t know. In 
every other way except her fatal obsession, she was 
sincere and sweet; she followed the precepts of re- 
ligion and morality, she was unselfish in giving her 


44 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


time to the poor, the old, the sick, infirm, and de- 
spairing. But in her heart, along with these fruits 
of the Spirit, remained the ineradicable root of all 
evil. 

The optimist Browning tells this horrible story, 
because it confirms the teachings of Christianity. 
Christian faith teaches original sin, the corruption 
of the human heart. We all stand in daily need of 
redemption. 

To find this malignant filth in a sanctuary as pure 
as that young girl’s heart seemed, was, as Browning 
says, like finding a spider in the communion-cup, like 
finding a toad in the christening-font. “That some 
persons may be mainly evil, and others mainly good, 
is neither surprising nor terrifying; but the mixture 
of good and evil in the finest characters is both a 
marvel and a curse. 

Nothing is more astounding than the internal 
range of human nature. Not only are there people 
living and dead, who are classified as heroes or vil- 
lains; but in the heart of every person there are 
purity and vulgarity, courage and cowardice, nobility 
and meanness, sublimity and triviality, unselfishness 
and selfishness. The human heart is a garden where 
lovely flowers and poisonous weeds grow side by 
side. Life is dangerous. 

A good man sitting in church at half-past eleven 
on Sunday morning, may be in a hallowed frame of 
mind; at that moment it would seem incredible to 
him that he could be coarse, or profane, or petulant, 


SIN 45 


or mean. Yet before sunset that same person may 
be swearing in rage, or tempted by sensual imag- 
inings, or exhibit the evidences of petty jealousy and 
selfish egotism. Out of the same mouth, said the 
Apostle James, cometh blessing and cursing. 

My observation of human nature and my belief 
in the teachings of Jesus combine to prove over- 
whelmingly to my mind the truth of original sin. 

When I say that I believe in original sin, I do 
not mean that I believe in a once commonly-accepted 
theological dogma. We used to be taught that 
when Adam and Eve ate the apple, not only did sin 
enter the world so that every succeeding human 
baby was conceived and born in sin, but that you and 
I, now dwelling in America in the twentieth century, 
are equally guilty with Adam of committing that 
particular sin. 


In Adam’s fall 
We sinned all. 


Such a doctrine appears to me absurd. However 
much I may regret Adam’s unfortunate curiosity, 
what he did has never troubled my conscience. I 
don’t care whether he ate an apple or a watermelon. 
I feel not the slightest responsibility for any one 
of his actions or thoughts. I have done enough my- 
self to cause me sufficient remorse without borrow- 
ing obligations from men long dead. 

But although the theory that I myself committed 
a sin when Adam ate the apple appears to me ri- 


46 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


diculous, it does not appear to me so absurd as the 
doctrine I hear frequently today from Christian 
pulpits, and read even oftener in _nicely-printed 
books. ‘The modern teaching is that there is no 
such thing as original sin; that men and women are 
not naturally bad, but naturally good; that the im- 
pelling forces in the human heart are not downward, 
but upward; that human nature is inherently beau- 
tiful and noble. This seems to me the last word 
in falsehood and folly. 

Of course if this reassuring and flattering theory 
be true, we do not need to be born again; we do 
not need to be converted; we need no divine sacri- 
fice; we need no church, no Bible, and no religion; 
the church and the Gospels go together to the scrap- 
heap. Christ lived and died, not for sinners, but 
for people who are pretty good anyhow; the Great 
Physician spent his life visiting those who were 
healthy. 

All we should conceivably need if we were natu- 
rally good would be some training to develop our 
goodness, as a natural athlete needs a professional 
coach. Incidentally, very few are natural athletes. 

Yet it is the truth we want. I do not cling to 
religion because I love it. If it is true that human 
nature is naturally good, I am through with the 
Christian religion. 

Despite the fact that in the bright lexicon of 
youth there is today no such word as sin, the fact of 
sin cannot be annihilated by complacency. If sin 


SIN 47 


is selfishness and virtue unselfishness, then I believe 
that man is naturally, instinctively evil. My belief 
is verified by the study of history, by reading the 
newspapers, and by using my eyes. 

Know thyself. Did any man ever know himself ? 
The biggest of all fools, said the Frenchman, is the 
man who thinks he knows himself. As we look back 
on many of our past actions, our conduct and the 
impelling motive often seem inexplicable. How 
could I have done that? How could I have been 
such an ass? We go even further. A very common 
expression is this—What possessed me to do such 
a thing? As though we really had been possessed 
by some evil spirit of folly or darkness. 

Sometimes, indeed, though not so often, we are 
as much surprised by our courage or goodness in 
some emergency as by our more frequent yielding 
to selfishness. In the brilliant play, The Devil's 
Disciple, Bernard Shaw makes his theoretically un- 
principled hero give up his life for some one else, 
some one whom he did not love. He was as much 
amazed by his action as were his neighbours. The 
point in the motivation of that particular drama was 
that the hero could not tell why he had done it. 
He simply had been ignorant of himself. 

The heart of a girl is a dark forest, says a Rus- 
sian proverb; if we cannot know our own hearts, 
how foolish it is to pretend that we understand the 
minds and hearts of others! Browning, a lifelong 
specialist in the soul, came to the conclusion that 


48 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


he did not know anything about it. All he could 
give was an abundance of individual illustrations. 


“You are sick, that’s sure’—they say: 
“Sick of what?”—they disagree. 
“Tis the brain’—thinks Doctor A; 
“Tis the heart”—holds Doctor B; 
“The liver—my life I’d lay!” 
“The lungs!” ‘The lights!” 
Ah me! 


So ignorant of man’s whole 
Of bodily organs plain to see— 
So sage and certain, frank and free, 
About what’s under lock and key— 
Man’s soul! 


The human heart, said Jeremiah, is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? 

I shall believe that man is naturally good, when 
in danger the average man feels the impulse of 
courage stronger than the impulse of self-preserva- 
tion; when in the exposure to sensuality, the aver- 
age man secretly prefers continence to self-indul- 
gence; when, in a crisis of his fortunes, the average 
man instinctively prefers the shattering truth to the 
sheltering falsehood; when, in ordinary business 
affairs, the average man instinctively prefers the 
welfare of the prospective buyer to his own; when, 
in ordinary everyday life, the average man instinc- 
tively acts on motives of unselfishness rather than 
of selfishness. 

And when the national policy of any country is 


SIN 49 


guided more by considerations of universal benevo- 
lence than by domestic advancement. As a matter 
of fact, although many nations are ostensibly 
Christian, not one directs its foreign policy on 
Christian principles. 

But it is not with groups, or communities, or na- 
tions, that I am just now engaged. It is with the in- 
dividual man, woman, and child. 

Political Economy is called a science. It is based 
on the following law: Every man will get all he 
can for himself with the least possible effort. Now 
fortunately there are some unselfish individuals to 
whom this does not apply; but there are not enough 
of them to impair the validity of the law. The foun- 
dation of selfishness, sin, is strong enough to bear 
the structure of a whole science. 

It is safe to assume, leaving out the crooks and 
the professional swindlers, who, nevertheless, are 
quite numerous, that the ordinary affairs of respect- 
able life are conducted on the axiom that every one 
will buy as cheaply as he can and sell as dearly as 
he can. This is so taken for granted, that when- 
ever we see a man acting otherwise, we are sur- 
prised. I knew a druggist in New Haven, now with 
God, who used to tell his customers frankly, when 
they were about to buy of him something expensive, 
and he knew that in this instance he had something 
cheaper that was just as good, that they would do 
better to take the cheaper article. He was as bald 
as it is possible for a man to be; and one day, when 


s0 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


an incipiently bald man came to him to buy a patent- 
medicine hair-restorer, and asked Mr. Spalding if 
it were reliable, the wise druggist asked him in re- 
turn to consider the condition of the man he was 
addressing. His honesty and unselfishness were the 
talk of the town. 

Did he fail in business? Far from it. His shop 
was always full of customers, who knew the relia- 
6ility of the seller. He was a church-member who 
preached a sermon every day in the week. 

Which leads me to the reflexion that although 
the majority of people believe that selfishness is the 
best way to get on in the world, they are in error. 
Christianity 1s against the selfish instincts of the 
human heart, but it is always in harmony with 
reason. It is always good sense. 

Business standards are higher morally than ever 
before; more and more business men are realising 
the commercial value not only of honesty, but even 
of kindness and good will. Although I have a low 
opinion of the natural instincts of humanity, al- 
though I firmly believe in the corruption of the 
human heart, although I am under no sweet illu- 
sion that men and women are about-all-right any- 
how, am I a pessimist? I am not. 

The refreshing, encouraging, inspiring truth is 
this: that although men and women are naturally 
bad, every one of them can become good. It is not 
being, but becoming, that fills me with hope for the 
future of the race. 


SIN 51 


This is why the sight of a good man or a good 
woman, and I know many, is so stimulating. I 
know that it is never an accident. I know that in 
every single instance goodness has been won by a 
daily fight with the ever-active forces of evil. It 
is a victory; it is a triumph. And as human nature 
is naturally inclined toward evil, so it is capable 
of conquering it. 

Jesus said, ‘It must needs be that offences come.” 
It must needs be. It is of the essence of life and of 
conditions in this world. Jesus was never under 
any illusion about the natural goodness of men and 
things. His diagnosis was always accurate, always 
confirmed by facts. 

The two great positive realities in this world are 
sin and pain. Evil and suffering are prime charac- 
teristics of humanity. I am sceptical of many 
things. I do not believe the half of what I hear, 
or one fifth of what I see in print. But I am certain 
of the positive, aggressive, sleepless force of evil 
in the world. I say it is active, not passive. 

Suppose a gardener planted the seeds of flowers 
or of vegetables, and then left them alone. Would 
the result be satisfactory? It would not. Weeds, 
which come up and flourish without human effort, 
would destroy the place. It is only by incessant 
care, and struggling against the sinister forces of 
nature, that the man gets the crop he desires. In 
other words, evil things grow naturally; good things 
come only by vigilance and hard work. 


s2 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Suppose a man has a barrel of sound apples, and 
then places among them one rotten specimen. Does 
it not seem that in these days, when the world has 
been made safe for democracy, and where every- 
thing is settled by majority vote, that the hundreds 
of good apples ought to be able to outvote the one 
bad apple? Surely the healthful influence of so 
many should be able to counteract and overcome the 
destructive influence of one? But of course it is 
not so. The one rotten apple will make all the rest 
like unto itself. 

How interesting it would be if good health were 
contagious! If one man, after successfully sus- 
taining a thorough examination by a physician, and 
declared absolutely healthy, could, by walking down 
the aisles of a hospital, cure the sufferers—let them 
catch his health. It is unfortunate, but true, that 
there are no epidemics of health; the epidemics are 
concerned with disease. It will not do to subject a 
healthy community to one person suffering from an 
infectious illness. 

No, evil is natural, positive, aggressive; as indi- 
viduals and communities have been destroyed by 
disease germs, so whole nations have been destroyed 
by immorality and predatory selfishness. 

Curiously enough, along with the bodily and pos- 
itive fact of evil, we have the mental fact of Good. 
Every man and every child knows that Beauty, and 
Truth, and Goodness are valuable and desirable. 
Loveliness is instantly apprehended as better than 


SIN 53 


ugliness; accuracy and the correct way of doing 
things are instantly seen to be better than any lie or 
false method: virtue is instantly recognised to be 
better than vice. 

I agree with the late Mr. Clutton-Brock that in 
education we lay too much stress on Obedience. In 
an army, at sea, and in emergencies, discipline and 
safety require immediate and uncompromising 
obedience. But in schools there are pupils whose 
rebellion against authority is based—even though 
they do not always know it—on a love for truth, 
beauty, and goodness. The regrettable but common 
opposition between artists and puritans, scientists 
and mystics, is quite often based on a misunderstand- 
ing, where both parties are really trying to follow 
the same ideals. 

In order to see how naturally inclined to truth, 
beauty, and goodness is the mind of the average 
man, all one has to do is to see a drama in the thea- 
tre or a motion-picture. he sympathy of the spec- 
tators is invariably with the virtuous hero or hero- 
ine; they cannot bear to see him yield to temptation; 
and when the protagonist speaks noble, moral senti- 
ments, he is often loudly applauded. Benavente, 
the Spanish dramatist, remarked, ‘“‘One-fourth part 
of the morality, goodness, and sense of justice which 
an audience brings into the theatre, would, if left 
outside, make the world over into paradise.” 

Victor Hugo’s hero, Jean Valjean, who after his 
conversion, led a life of moral grandeur and chronic 


54 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


self-sacrifice, is universally admired; thousands of 
pupils in schools and colleges vote for him as “the 
favourite character in fiction.’ But in real life, 
do they act like him? The universal tone of com- 
mencement addresses at the graduation exercises 
of schools and colleges is ideal. Honesty, purity, 
public service, unselfishness in private and business 
affairs are set forth as the correct standards of con- 
duct. But are all school and college graduates ex- 
emplars of these qualities? 

We instinctively know and applaud the Good; yet 
the strange fact is that we instinctively follow the 
Bad. ‘The mind pulls one way, the body another. 
Temptation is always strongest when the need of 
resistance to it is greatest. Just as a man who has 
spoken a language incorrectly in his youth and has 
later learned to speak correctly, will, in moments of 
excitement or passion, revert to his dialect or to his 
errors, so even those who have been most carefully 
trained in character, will, in moments of stress, 
often go wrong. ‘The Bible states the fact bluntly: 
‘But it has happened unto them according to the 
true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit 
again; and the sow that was washed to her wallow- 
ing in the mire.” 

When Faust was talking with his amanuensis 
Wagner (whom, by the way, Signor Croce greatly 
admires) the humbler man said he was entirely 
satisfied with the pursuit of learning. Faust re- 
garded him as enviable, because there was no civil 


SIN 55 


war in his soul. With me, said the great Doctor, 
it is different. [wo souls dwell together in my 
bosom: they are constantly struggling to be sep- 
arated: one is elevating, the other degrading: I 
shall never be rid of this internal conflict. 

In the seventh chapter of his letter to the Ro- 
mans, Paul, in immortal phrases, expressed the 
same profound truth. 


I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see 
another law in my members, warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which 
is in my members. . . . So then with the mind I myself serve 
the law of God: but with the flesh the law of sin. 


Struggle is the essence of natural and mental life. 
All good things are accomplished only by fighting 
against evil forces. We may be damaged, we may 
be soiled, we may be scarred in this holy war, the 
only war that deserves the adjective; but the victory 
is worth the effort. 

Realising our deficiencies, realising the humiliat- 
ing difference between our belief and our behaviour, 
what shall we do? Nothing? Jesus said, It must 
needs be that offences come: meaning, that in a 
world like this, with human nature as it is, offences 
are certain to occur. But he added, Woe to that 
man by whom the offence cometh! 

We have the opportunity to develop, to improve, 
and thus to make the world a little better than we 
found it. Nothing is more tragic, in a world so full 


56 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


of misfortune as this is, for any man to add to the 
burden. He is not much better than those ruffians 
who seize the opportunity of a great fire or a public 
disaster or an international] war, to add to their own 
private gains. If we think we cannot accomplish 
any good, let us at least try not to increase the 
amount of evil. Even that aim will require constant 
vigilance, constant effort. 

If we were naturally good, we should not need 
religion. If we were naturally virtuous, industrious, 
and reliable, we should not need restraining and cor- 
rective forces. How often does a mother in one day 
feel obliged to say to her children the one word 
Don’t! Where should we be without parental train- 
ing, without school discipline, without penalties, nay, 
without the police? Where was Boston? 

Humanity needs every elevating influence and the 
most elevating influence in the world is the Christian 
religion. We need to be saved not once, but every 
day, because nobody is safe. Our Lord is the great- 
est Champion of the mind against the natural in- 
stincts; by following him, we follow the best we 
know. 

Suppose an army set out to march through a hos- 
tile territory, and was warned of the danger of 
ambush; that army would be on the alert. In the 
eternal warfare between reason and instinct, be- 
tween unselfishness and selfishness, the enemy is not 
outside, nor is there any remote or unusual danger 
to be feared. The enemy is encamped within, in 


SIN 57 


the heart of the citadel; we are in danger all the 
time. 

There are innumerable instances of men and 
women, who have lived honourably, or at least inof- 
fensively, till they are past the age of forty. Are 
they then safe? Is only youth the period of danger? 
The answer is found in the number who astonish 
their friends and acquaintances by suddenly ‘“‘going 
wrong.” ‘Why, I would have wagered anything 
that he was steady as a rock.’ Hamlet was 
astounded and horrified at the behaviour of his 
mother, not merely because he thought of her as a 
mother and not as a woman, a thought common to 
all sons, but because he supposed she had reached 
years of discretion. There are no years of discretion. 


Rebellious hell, 
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, 
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, 
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame, 
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge; 
Since frost itself as actively doth burn, 
And reason panders will. 


There are those who laugh at the expression “‘miser- 
able sinners.” They deny indignantly the accusa- 
tions which the Bible directs sweepingly at men and 
women in general. “J am not a viper: I am not a 
worm: I am not a sinner: I am a respectable citizen.” 

Well, what is original sin? Granting that you 
are free from the temptations of sensuality, lying, 


58 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


stealing, cruelty—a large admission—are you living 
up to your ideals? Are you as valuable to the com- 
munity as you know you might be? Are you in every 
respect the man you would like to be? If not, you 
are, in the old phrase, living in a state of sin. For 
this is sin: to be aware of one’s opportunities for 
doing good, and not to take them. No one has a 
right to be complacent or self-satisfied if one is not 
doing one’s best. The irresistible conclusion is, that 
every man and woman is a sinner. 

Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

The knowledge of humanity displayed by Jesus, 
together with his wisdom, make me feel certain that 
he would not have appeared in this world if the 
world had not needed him. Does it need him today? 
Look at the world. Do you need him? Look in 
your heart. 


IV 
DEATH 


I was six years old when my sister died. It was 
just at dawn, and I remember my mother rushing 
into the room where I was, and screaming franti- 
cally, “My God! My God!’ I could not understand 
this, and turning to my father, I asked, ‘‘Papa, what 
makes Mama swear so?” and he told me she was 
not swearing, but praying in agony because she had 
lost her only daughter. My sister was nearly seven- 
teen years older than I, and had taken care of me 
very often, so that she seemed more like a second 
mother than a sister. She had typhoid fever; it was 
a long illness; I had been taken to her bedroom, so 
that she might say Good-bye. But her death was a 
mystery to my childish mind; I saw her in the coffin; 
I went to her funeral in a state of excitement. It 
seemed to me incredible that she had disappeared 
from our home and family life, had become inac- 
cessible. ‘This was the first time I was brought face 
to face with the mystery of death. For death is 
as complete a mystery as life. 

No one can enter or pass a graveyard without 
serious reflexions. To some it causes a momentary 
feeling of dismay, akin to physical discomfort; to 

59 


60 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


others a whole train of thought is set in motion. To 
me the graveyard is not my own tragedy, nor the 
tragedy of those who lie there, not even of those 
who died young; the tragedy comes in the thought 
of the racking suffering represented by each grave, 
the all but intolerable agony in the minds of every 
little family group who were forced to stand and see 
the remains of some one inexpressibly dear com- 
mitted to the ground. Thus every grave represents 
the grief and anguish of the living. It is not the 
thought of death—which is as natural as life—but 
the cruel thought of separation that makes the 
churchyard an accumulation of tragedies. 

The difference between past physical and mental 
suffering is the difference between an enemy who 
has been conquered and an enemy who is in ambush. 
Physical suffering can be so acute as to dominate 
for a time both body and mind; it is absurd to say 
that physical suffering is good for us, when in reality 
it acts on the kingdom of the mind like a usurping 
tyrant, destroying both pleasure and activity. But 
when physical suffering departs, it is over and done 
with. A healed scar will not ache. About mental 
anguish there is something insidious; it may return 
at any moment, at unexpected ti.aes and in strange 
places. One may be resting placidly in fancied 
security, one may be sitting in agreeable conversa- 
tion with friends, one may be laughing at a comedy 
in the theatre, and suddenly, without warning, the 
torture returns. All suffering is the enemy to happi- 


DEATH 61 


ness; but mental grief is an alert foe, who at any 
moment may make a surprise attack. 

Yet, even so, the agony of separation is reduced 
and softened by time. I have seen persons nearly 
insane with grief, in a state of frenzy. To look 
upon them at such a moment, one would not believe 
it possible that they could ever laugh again, or in 
any conceivable manner, enjoy existence; yet, meet- 
ing them after the lapse of time, one finds them in 
pleasurable activities, working, eating, laughing with 
their friends. The most difficult thing to imagine, 
when looking on a face disordered by grief, is to 
imagine that same face expressively interested in 
external affairs, news of the world, politics, athletics, 
and what not; yet in the course of time, the eyes and 
the mind return to normal things, and he who had 
no room in his thoughts except for the obsession of 
sorrow, is once more mentally active. 

One of the most impressive things in Barrie’s 
drama, Mary Rose, is the representation of the re- 
turn to normality, of the domination of grief by 
interest in mundane affairs. 

In Shakespeare’s play, King John, Constance cries 


Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts, _ 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 


Yet eventually the things that give us the most 
anguish are turned by the strange alchemy of time 


62 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


into golden reminiscence. At first one cannot bear 
to see anything that reminds one acutely of a friend 
who has died; but after the passage of healing time, 
one loves to dwell on those very details. I have seen 
members of a family, speaking of one long dead, 
smiling and saying, ‘“‘Do you remember how she 
liked this?” that is to say, recalling with a feeling 
akin to pleasure the very details that in the early 
days of bereavement are unbearable. 

We do not forget those we have loved, and we do 
not wish to forget them. It is astonishing how 
clearly we can recall them by the miracle of memory. 
They have absolutely and totally disappeared; they 
are as entirely beyond our physical reach as though 
they had never existed; but by a simple effort of 
memory, we see their faces, animated as they were 
in life by individual expression. 

And it is interesting to remember that the forma- 
tive influence of friends upon us is often much 
greater after their death than before. ‘This is par- 
ticularly true of parents. The young man thinks 
his father and mother are mistaken about life, he 
does not take their advice seriously, he says and does 
the things that shock and distress their minds. Years 
after he has lost them, he finds himself ‘coming 
around to their way of thinking,” acting as they 
acted. They seem to reach out from the grave 
hands more potent than physical hands, and guide 
him in a manner impossible in life. In Brand 


Whitlock’s novel, J. Hardin and Son, during the 


DEATH 63 


lifetime of the father, there was civil war between 
him and his son; the latter enraged his stern father 
by continuous, active rebellion. Years after the old 
man had departed, his son found, much to his sur- 
prise, that he was behaving like his father, taking 
his father’s viewpoint, looking at life through his 
father’s eyes. 

Even those of us who are surest of immortality, 
whose religious faith is most serene, cannot escape 
the pain of separation. If one goes to a pier on the 
departure of an ocean steamer, one will see many 
affecting scenes. As the ship moves away, there are 
those on shore who are crying and smiling at the 
same moment, waving their handkerchiefs and call- 
ing out good wishes. ‘hey would not bring their 
friends back if they could, but they cannot help feel- 
ing lonely. Now if we really had the faith that 
moves mountains, we should mentally say to dying 
friends, ‘“‘Happy Journey!’ as we do to those who 
travel abroad. But human beings simply cannot 
rise to such a level, and it is vain to make such 
demands on human capacity. 

‘‘No work begun shall ever pause for death,” 
said Browning; and sometimes the influence of those 
who died young is greater than if they had lived 
long and successful lives. Consider Nathan Hale. 
He was sent into the British lines by Washington, in 
order that he might obtain information useful to the 
Continental Army. But he totally and ignomini- 
ously failed. I do not know of a more complete 


64 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


failure in history than Nathan Hale. Instead of 
getting information, the British got him; and I have 
no doubt that when the rope was around his neck, 
his last and most bitter thought was not that he had 
to die so young, or that he would never see his sweet- 
heart again, or that his own career was closed—the 
bitterest thought undoubtedly was that he was a 
failure. What would Washington say? He would 
say, “I wish I had sent an abler man, a man who 
could have accomplished something, not this in- 
competent bungler.”” Now imagine what might 
have happened. Suppose Nathan Hale had suc- 
ceeded, had returned in safety, with a mass of 
valuable information. Suppose as a result of his 
expedition, the American army had won a decisive 
battle; suppose Nathan Hale had eventually become 
a major-general, and after the war President of the 
United States, and had died at the age of eighty, 
full of years and honours. His direct influence on 
successive generations of Americans as a general 
officer, president, and statesman would not have 
compared in magnitude with his actual influence as 
a failure. Since the day of his ignominious death 
in the orchard, his personal influence on every Amer- 
ican has been enormously stimulating and will con- 
tinue to be so for centuries to come. He died a 
failure, but he died with glorious courage. So true 
it is that not length of years, or an accumulation of 
deeds, but personal character is what counts. ‘‘No 
work begun shall ever pause for death.” 


DEATH 65 


Speculation on the future state is as old as human 
history. No one can help asking, Is death the end? 
Shall we live again? Is matter less destructible than 
spirit? If there is a future state, what will it be, 
and what part shall we play therein? 

There has been an advance in the dignity of specu- 
lative thought. The Indians buried their warriors 
with bow and arrows, because their conception of 
heaven was one eternal happy hunting-ground. Some 
of the Northern races imagined that heaven was a 
place where men fought all day, and drank all night; 
because their chief earthly pleasures were fighting 
and drinking. ‘There seems to have been no place 
for women in this Paradise. The Mohammedans 
imagined that heaven was a place of unlimited sen- 
suality. Some of our Puritan forefathers seemed to 
believe that after death they would spend millions 
of years standing in white robes, holding palms in 
their hands, and singing ‘Worthy the Lamb!” 

Now whatever the future state may be, it 
seems that it ought never to be static, but rather a 
place of continuous and infinite development. For 
the most striking difference between human beings 
and animals is the tremendous fact that all human 
beings have the capacity for development, something 
denied to mere animals. ‘There is no reason a dog 
or a horse should live forever, because they reach 
the limit of fulfilment in this earthly existence. My 
dog, who is now nine years old, is clever in his 
canicular way; but if he lived to be seventy or seven 


66 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


thousand, he would be the same dog, no further 
advanced mentally than he is now. On the other 
hand, every child, no matter how elementary in 
intelligence, has in his infant mind possibilities of 
development so vast that literally eternity is not 
long enough to exhaust them. Not only does it 
seem a calamity that scholars, scientists, and invent- 
ors should die, and their steady advance come to an 
annihilating conclusion; the death of every indi- 
vidual—if it be the end—is a waste so appalling that 
the universe, from the human point of view, is 
turned into a farce. Life would then really be what 
Mark Twain said it was, the worst practical joke 
ever played. 

Every human being has in his mind an infinite 
capacity for development. I want to live forever, 
because I know, that granted the one blessing of 
health, I should never find eternity tiresome. Even 
at this moment I have enough plans, desires, and 
interests to keep me steadily and cheerfully busy for 
several trillion years; and by that time I should 
certainly have accumulated enough new ideas to wish 
to continue. It is even more generally true of intel- 
lectual interests than it is of food that the appetite 
grows by what it feeds on. If the man who amasses 
money cannot stop, but is ever eager to acquire more 
wealth, the scholar, the student, the man of an en- 
quiring mind, is even more eager to learn indefi- 
nitely, to obtain new experiences. Is it possible to 
imagine Shakespeare losing interest in human 


DEATH 67 


nature? Can one imagine Edison ceasing to wish to 
make new inventions? Is it possible for one whcé 
has spent his earthly life in the pursuit of some form 
of knowledge, gladly to acquiesce in cessation? 
“The highest good is the growth of the soul.” 

The parable of the talents was directed against 
those who are content to make no advance; who 
receive the gift of mind without improving it. The 
greatest sin one can commit against one’s own per- 
sonality is the lack of ambition to enrich and im- 
prove it. For the aim of life is not merely to secure 
physical comfort, delightful as that is; the aim of 
life is to grow, and thus to fulfil to the uttermost 
possibilities. 

Furthermore there is hope for immortality in the 
miracle of individuality, of personal identity. It is 
a cheering thought that although all human beings 
are alike in their bodily and mental sensations, enjoy 
the same pleasures, suffer from the same causes,— 
every individual person is a unit, who has never been 
matched in past ages, and whose replica will never 
appear on earth again. There is no wider gulf 
imaginable than the gulf which separates one man 
from another. Even in cases where sons resemble 
their fathers so noticeably that they have the same 
facial expression, the same trick of the voice, the 
same arm-gesture and bodily attitude in excitement 
or repose, the difference between such a son and such 
a father is wider than the space between East and 


68 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


West. They resemble each other in many ways, 
but they are not even imaginably the same. 

There is some comfort, I say, in this miracle of 
individuality. You may be poor, stupid, unsuccess- 
ful, unhappy; but there is one form of wealth that 
cannot be taken away from you—your own person- 
ality. The story of Peter Schlemihl was a tragic 
story, because when he sold his shadow, he sold a 
part of himself. Of all the billions of men or women 
that have walked the ways of earth, and of all the 
billions that will inhabit our planet to the end of 
time, you, you who read these words, are unique. 
You have a separate and inimitable personality. 

Thus the waste of war cannot be reckoned in the 
loss of wealth or material things which can eventu- 
ally be successfully duplicated; the untold waste of 
war consists in the removal from earth of an enor- 
mous number of irreplaceable personalities. 

The evidences in Nature for the persistence of 
individual life after death are not sufficiently numer- 
ous or weighty to be convincing. The fact that man 
wants to live, that he can hardly imagine himself not 
living, that the whole scheme of the world becomes 
farcical without immortality are evidences of the 
will to live, of the instinct for existence, rather than 
of the fact itself. Of course there are plenty of 
happy analogies thrust upon our minds by Nature. 
The dying, rotting grain springing into life, which 
cannot indeed live at all unless it first dies; the ap- 
parently dead trees in Winter springing into a glory 


DEATH 69 


of new life in the Spring. As we grow older, the 
Spring, which made little impression upon us in 
childhood, becomes a glorious and inspiring drama. 
Sometimes after a long winter and a cold March 
and April, the trees seem to burst out some May 
morning like an explosion; I have trembled in ecstasy 
in beholding them. 

But to offset this, there is the most pessimistic 
thought which can ever visit a serious and contem- 
plative mind; it is the appalling waste of Nature, the 
apparent indifference of Nature to the life and wel- 
fare of the individual. Through the passion for 
existence and the passion for reproduction Nature 
has abundantly provided for the continuation of the 
race, of the type; but for the welfare of the indi- 
vidual there is apparently no provision. It is ridicu- 
lous to talk about the survival of the fittest; for the 
truly fit-to-live have no more chance in a general 
epidemic, calamity, railway accident, earthquake, fire 
or cyclone, than those who are apparently not fit to 
live at all. 

Let us not deceive ourselves with sentimentality 
or with cant. There is a vast amount of cant talked 
about death by those who have no belief in religion. 
I saw a book once called The Eternal Life and took 
it up with some hope. But all the author had to say 
was, that although the individual ceases to exist at 
death, we should be comforted by the thought that 
the Human Race goes on. 

That the Human Race goes on is not necessarily 


70 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


a cause for joy. Chekhov said that we comfort 
ourselves with the thought that we are sacrificing 
ourselves for posterity, that the next generations 
will be much happier and better; and then when the 
future generations arrive, they will say, “How un- 
happy we are! how much better it was in the good 
old times!” 

But there is in reality no such thing as a Race, 
even when spelled with a capital. There is no such 
thing as racial happiness, any more than there is 
such a thing as national happiness. Happiness is ex- 
clusively concerned with the individual. The Human 
Race in itself is not a reality; it is simply a collection 
of individuals. There can be no individual happi- 
ness in racial immortality. 

Either we live individually after death or we do 
not. If we really die, we are then as nonexistent as 
we were in the year 1768. A doctor and nurse stood 
by a dying man, and when he breathed his last, the 
nurse said, ‘‘Wellk, he knows all about it now.” But 
if consciousness ceased with bodily death, he really 
knew less about it than before; for at any rate men 
who are alive can guess and speculate. 

There is no room for immortality in this world. 
Death is a necessity in the economic order; and 
taking humanity as a whole, death is a fortunate 
necessity. The absolute certainty of death—for 
there is nothing more certain—casts a dark shadow 
over every human being, and exerts a profound 
influence on every life and character. From its dark 


DEATH 71 


roots springs the bright flower of humility. How 
absolutely intolerable most persons would be if they 
knew they were not to die! 

Death is the sharpest check to egotism, the heavy 
brake on passion, the chill on lust, the restraint on 
avarice, the eternal No to selfishness. What would 
become of the average run of men and women if a 
man like Napoleon were immortal?; There have 
been many persons in history marked by a combina- 
tion of towering ambition and colossal selfishness ; 
the average man is never safe until such persons are 
dead. | | 

The thought that every one of us must die creates 
in our hearts a healthy modesty, which is not only 
necessary for the proper development of our own 
personality and character, but which makes us toler- 
able to others. If we did not know that we must 
leave the earth and every earthly possession, we 
should all become insufferable; there would be no 
community on earth where it would be possible to 
live in peace. 

In the Old Testament there is not much emphasis 
laid on the future life; it is in the religion of the 
Lord Jesus Christ where individual immortality, in 
some sphere of free and untrammelled development, 
is most greatly stressed. Christianity lays all its 
emphasis on the individual life—no religion has ever 
placed such a value on human beings. Not a 
sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father’s 
notice—every hair of your heads is numbered. Jesus 


972 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


believed and taught that God was really our Father 
—that every one of His children was to Him 
inexpressibly precious. ‘‘Your Heavenly Father 
Knoweth.” 

No one ever understood the human heart so pro- 
foundly as Jesus. Wherever we can test his ideas, 
so far as they relate to earthly activities and be- 
haviour, he was always right. He spoke the truth. 
It is reassuring to remember that one who is accurate 
when his ideas can be subjected to verification, has a 
good chance of being right in his predictions. 

Now Jesus was certain of personal immortality, 
of the persistence of the individual soul after death. 
About this matter he spoke with confidence. He 
was sure of the future—can we not follow where he 
leads? If we find all of his practical teaching wise, 
reasonable, and true, does it not help us to believe 
that he was not mistaken in other things? 

I confess that my own hope of the future life is 
based on the personality of Jesus, on the Incarna- 
tion, on my belief that he revealed the Divine Idea 
to helpless and suffering and ignorant humanity. 

There is no reason we should not entertain our 
minds with speculations about the nature of future 
mental activities after we have got rid of the body. 
It is my own individual hope, that as it is now possi- 
ble to travel everywhere about this earth, after 
death it will be possible to travel all over the uni- 
verse. Light travels two hundred thousand miles a 
second; but there is something that travels infinitely 


DEATH 73 


faster than Light—it is Thought. When I speak to 
another man, and say the word Sirius, we both in- 
stantaneously travel from the earth to that particu- 
lar star. Hence it is possible that after death, when 
the checks and hindrances to activity are removed, 
our individual spirits may actually travel as fast 
as thought. Such journeys would be interesting. 

There is an innate pessimism in humanity shown 
in many ways and shown especially in this. There ts 
no doubt that the chief reason why so many do not 
believe in immortality is not because the idea of im- 
mortality is foolish, but simply because “‘it is too 
good to be true.’”’ But if the revelation of God in 
Jesus Christ was a true revelation, nothing is too 
good to be true. Even as it is, his mere appearance 
on earth is the best thing that ever happened. 

There is one result that should rise from the 
thought of death—it should make us more sympa- 
thetic, more kindly, more considerate, more warm- 
hearted. A ship’s company become more easily and 
more informally acquainted than mere street 
crowds; and if there be danger, the artificial walls 
that separate human beings from one another vanish 
immediately. Now we ought to regard all humanity 
as a ship’s company, for we are all travelling some- 
whither. Furthermore, we are all in danger. No 
one can tell what calamity or disaster may happen 
tomorrow. 

When I was a young man, I had an accident, and 
was forced to walk on crutches for a month. I could 


94 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


not help noticing an obvious fact. Strangers in the 
street looked at me with a peculiar expression. 
There was a look of pity, sympathy, a desire to help 
on nearly every face I saw. That was because I 
was on crutches. 

Let us remember that although only a very few 
show their wounds as I was forced to do, every man 
and woman has griefs and sorrows that are as real 
as if they were plain to see. Every man’s soul is 
bleeding internally. Even the happiest people have 
troubles. Now as it is impossible to imagine any one 
kicking or striking me when I was on crutches—if 
any one had done so, he would have been called a 
monster—so we ought to be equally careful not to 
strike others in what may be their most sensitive 
spot. But there is an enormous amount of such 
cruelty happening every day. 

I suppose no one has ever heard of a friend’s 
death without acute remorse, without the bitter 
recollection either of injuries done to that friend or 
of opportunities for help that were missed. We 
always say, “If I had known he was going to die, 
I should have acted so differently.” Well, why 
should we always be accumulating material for re- 
morse and regret? We do know. We know that 
all our friends, acquaintances, and strangers are 
mortal. They will die. It is not necessary to be- 
spatter them with officious sympathy, but it is the 
part of wisdom to treat every human being with 
delicate care. The soul is more sensitive than the 


DEATH 75 


skin. If we cannot be of much use to those with 
whom we come in daily contact, we can at least try 
to avoid hurting them. 

It is astonishing how grateful people are for a 
little sympathy and consideration. I can remember, 
after the lapse of fifty years, certain words and acts 
of kindness, and I shall cherish the memory of those 
people so long as I live. 

In the midst of life we are in death. This is not 
only a chastening and sobering thought for the indi- 
vidual mind, it should have a daily influence on our 
conduct. 


Vv 
LIFE 


When I was a small boy, camping out with some 
companions on the shore of Long Island Sound, 
word came to us late one afternoon that a young 
man had been drowned; and we were asked to look 
for his body. Accordingly we walked along the 
beach for miles, searching the surface of the water, 
knowing that somewhere he would come in with the 
fiood tide. About nine o’clock in the evening, he was 
found. We entered a little hut, and there, fully 
dressed, lying on his back on a rough table, was the 
dead man. I have often read that every dead face 
has dignity. In this instance it was not so. He 
evidently had been an athlete; the knotted muscles in 
his arms and legs showed through his soaked 
clothes. But his face was half covered with sand, 
his body was twisted convulsively, as though he had 
died in a fierce struggle, and there was a look of 
almost petulant protest in his staring eyes. A mag- 
nificent young man had become a disfigured corpse. 
No use to speak to him; every connexion with human 
affairs was closed; he was dead. 

There are, however, many active human bodies 


walking the streets, who, in various ways, are 
76 


LIFE | 77 


mentally dead. A man to whom music means noth- 
ing, is musically dead—as dead as though he were 
already in the grave. A man to whom religion 
means nothing is spiritually dead. 

Shortly after the miracle of the loaves and fishes, 
Jesus spoke to a multitude of curiosity seekers, 
taking for his subject the Spiritual Life. (I remem- 
ber hearing Beecher dramatically describe the 
scene.) They had not the faintest glimmer of what 
he was talking about. He said, 


my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. 
For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, 
and giveth Life unto the world. 

Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. 


They were not expressing a pious wish, or saying 
anything that had religious significance. They 
wanted something to eat. If at that moment he had 
waved his hand, uttered some hocus-pocus, and made 
loaves of bread to appear, they would have eaten, 
and gone away completely satisfied. 


Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 

This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a 
man may eat thereof, and not die. 

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any 
man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that 
I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the 
world. 

The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How 
can this man give us his flesh to eat? ... 


78 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and 
mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down 
from heaven? 


These words, which have since that day stimulated 
and inspired many millions, meant nothing to those 
who heard them. The listeners were bewildered. 
They could not understand, because they were spir- 
itually dead. They understood food and drink, but 
not the hunger and thirst of the mind. Many of 
them left him altogether, and walked no more with 
him. But Jesus merely repeated with even more 
emphasis what he had already affirmed, as though he 
looked over and beyond that audience in Palestine to 
the countless generations of posterity, who would 
listen and understand and believe. Sometimes a 
teacher or a writer has to talk over the heads of his 
audience, in order to impress all the more deeply the. 
men and women of the future. Jesus concluded his 
address by these words of absolute truth. 


It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: 
the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 


With Jesus Spirit and Life meant the same thing. 

Jesus was always talking about life. ‘In him 
was life.” “I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly.” “Ye 
search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have 
eternal life . . . but ye will not come to me that 
ye may have life.” 


What did he mean by Life? 


LIFE 79 


Of course he believed in immortality, in existence 
after death. This belief is at the foundation of his 
religion and morality. But he did not mean that we 
should spend our time either waiting for the future 
life, or merely preparing for it. He knew we could 
have abundance of life here and now, and he wanted 
us to exchange poverty for wealth. It is the life 
within that can alone enrich personality. A man’s 
life consisteth not in the abundance of things which 
he possesseth. It does not consist in things at all. 

It is sad to see so many people throw away their 
lives. It is sad to see so many people unhappy, not 
through poverty in money, food, clothing, shelter, 
but poverty in life. All about us, in city and country, 
there are dwarfed, stunted, narrow, cramped, com- 
monplace, insignificant lives that ought to be en- 
riched. People are lying down when they ought to 
be standing up; crawling when they should be 
walking. 

The teaching of many of our realistic novelists, 
who often seem to be concerned only with the sordid 
aspects of life in villages and cities, is meant to 
convict us of sin. For every book, no matter how 
objective, has a moral lesson. Every artist is a 
teacher. ‘They wish to make us ashamed of an ex- 
istence filled only with pettiness, when it ought to be 
full of interest. Gorki said that in the tales of 
Chekhoy, the great realist seemed to be saying to 
his characters, “It is shameful of you to live like 
this.” 


80 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


What Jesus taught was the reality of the life of 
the spirit. It is not a myth: it is not an illusion: 
it is not a dream: it is not only as real a life as the 
physical existence, it is more intense. We must 
divest spirituality of shopworn sanctimonious 
phrases, that have lost their hitting power, and come 
back to the thrilling words of Jesus, who himself 
lived the life of the spirit. 

The best thing that can happen to a man or 
woman in this world is to grow, to develop; after 
physical maturity is reached, this growth can be only 
through the mind and spirit. It is a natural and 
tranquil growth, which is accomplished only by ful- 
filling certain conditions, by making the right con- 
nexion. It cannot be attained by doing some tre- 
mendous deed, or going through some exciting 
emotional experience. Nor can it come through 
spasms of sudden effort, nor through constant anx- 
iety—“‘taking thought.” 

Jesus lived in the country and in small settlements. 
He referred often to flowers and plants. He loved 
them, and taught from his observation this lesson: 
we cannot grow by worry or even by hard work. No 
poet ever spoke more beautifully of anything than 
Jesus spoke of the gorgeous lilies of Palestine. 

A plant grows all the time, though no one has 
ever seen it grow. So with the life of the spirit. 
We cannot grow merely by going to church on Sun- 
day, or by feeling religious only when we are in 
danger, or when some member of the family dies. 


LIFE 81 


The farmer does not make things grow. He simply 
gives them a chance. He improves the soil, removes 
obstacles, and endeavours to continue the connexion 
between the plant and the source of life. For if we 
understood what makes the plant grow, we should, 
as Tennyson says, know what God and man really 
are. 

‘God plants us where we grow,” said Pompilia. 
Now this may not be where we are most comfort- 
able. It is pleasant to be physically comfortable, in 
bodily ease, but if the growth of the mind is truly 
more important than the pleasure of the body, then 
it may in the long run be better for us to have difh- 
culties, hardships, pains, worries, frustrations, pri- 
vations, and disasters. Some may grow better in 
prosperity; others in rougher circumstances. ‘The 
important thing is to grow. Nearly all the intel- 
lectual work of the world, nearly all the world’s 
contributions to art, letters, and music, have been 
made in a bad climate. God plants us where we 
grow. 

Pompilia spoke of a well-meaning reformer, who, 
seeing a rose on a bush close to the roadside, and 
knowing that it was in imminent danger of destruc- 
tion from any careless passer, took the rose, and 
carefully placed it at the top of a tree, where it 
would be in security. But there it died. In Haw- 
thorne’s Snow Image, the children’s father, with the 
best intentions, placed the Snowchild in front of the 
warm fire, where it could be as comfortable as they. 


b] 


82 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


The spiritual climate of this world is harsh; but 
robust hearts thrive on it. They grow. 

As some people have more physical vitality than 
others, so some have more spiritual vitality. Some 
have tremendous spiritual vitality, whether they are 
lean in body like an ascetic, or fat. When there is 
complete loss of appetite, and one does not care for 
food, we know that.person is physically ill. He 
needs nourishment. So those who have given up 
reading the Bible and daily prayer and going to 
church and thinking about God, whose daily ex- 
istence is stuffed full of ephemeral affairs, they be- 
come spiritually sick. 

The body interests more people than the mind, 
because bodily wants and bodily pleasures are uni- 
versal. The most rudimentary roustabout and the 
most intellectual lady both have to eat and sleep. 
Both know the value of food, warmth, shelter. But 
although there are a hundred men who love meat 
to one who loves music, that does not prove that the 
love of music is a myth, or that it does not give 
happiness to those who cultivate it. 

Bodily sensations interest more people than the 
things of the mind. Mental pleasures interest more 
people than the things of the soul. In living the 
spiritual life, however, one does not lose either 
mental or bodily capacity. Jesus came to give us 
abundance of life—that we might live with bodily 
gusto, with intellectual curiosity, with spiritual 
fervour. In other words, that we might have per- 


LIFE 83 


sonal vitality: that we might in a month live longer 
than many live ina year. If daily life be interesting, 
one cannot be altogether unhappy. 

The average man recognises instantly the differ- 
ence between life and death. But if the average man 
were forced to define the word Existence, he would 
not find it immediately easy to do so ina satisfactory 
manner. ‘The best definition of Existence was given 
by the philosopher Lotze. He said, To Be is to be 
in Relations. 

A dead body has no relations with anything per- 
ceptible. It cannot hear what we say to it, or see 
the sunlight, or vote, or read the newspapers, or 
show any sensitiveness to heat or cold or any stimuli. 
That is why we know it to be dead. 

If to be is to be in relations, then the more rela- 
tions our minds have, the more vividly are we alive. 
A man who takes an interest only in his business is 
alive only that much. A man who takes an interest 
in his business, in world-politics, in music, in art, in 
astronomy, in literature, in athletics, is a hundred 
times more alive than the other, who is hardly more 
than an efficient machine. Every time a man learns 
a foreign language, or acquires a new interest, he 
widens his relations, and increases his vitality. He 
lives more. Roosevelt had enormous vitality, be- 
cause he was keenly interested in things as far apart 
as naval warfare and singingbirds. Everything in 
the world interested him, and his connexions with 
life were numerous. 


84 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


The more friends we have, the more we live. A 
man dies as often as he loses a friend, said Bacon; 
a relation with life was cut off; so far as that friend 
went, one died with him. But if that is true, it is 
also true that every time one makes a new friend, 
one gains new life. 

Thus for a man to be interested only in one thing, 
or to live a solitary and selfish life, isolated from 
society, is to live meanly as well as wickedly. His 
vitality is low. He needs spiritual nourishment. Of 
all vital forces for the enriching of life from within, 
religion is the most effective. The kingdom of God 
is within you. 

Furthermore, if we do not keep growing, if we 
do not improve, we cannot stand still. We cannot 
merely keep what we have got. For there is a law— 
the law of deterioration. Even if one takes the 
greatest care of things, they do not stay new and 
fresh. The new dress, the new house, the new auto- 
mobile, do not stay new. Immediately they begin 
to decay. If one owns a motor-car, one does not 
need to have an accident to have the car lose in 
value; no disaster is necessary. Mere time is sufhi- 
cient; ordinary wear and tear. One can no more 
keep one’s possessions fresh and new than one can 
preserve one’s youth. People do not need to have a 
railway accident, or a severe illness, or a major 
operation to lose what good looks they have. Time 
writes on one’s face and body with an indelible hand, 


LIFE 86 


and the more one tries to erase this by artifice, the 
more is the emphasis added to the natural work of 
time. 

Fortunately the life of the spirit need not decay 
with the life of the body. With proper nourish- 
ment, by keeping in relations with the necessary in- 
fluences, the life of the spirit can steadily develop 
even as the body deteriorates. ‘This is the reason 
that the sight of an old man or an old woman with 
a vigorous mind, a fresh heart, and a high spirit is 
so inspiring. It is an example that all can follow. 
Perhaps the real secret of life is this: while the body 
is growing worse, to have a constantly developing 
mind and a golden heart. Is it possible to have the 
mature mind of a man and the heart of a boy? It is. 

Wordsworth, in his Ode on the Intimations of 
Immortality, deplored the fact that as we advance 
in years from childhood, our minds harden and 
coarsen, are less sensitive to beauty and to nature, 
become in fact, dulled. He seemed to believe that 
not only do we live after death, but that we came 
from as glorious an existence as that to which we are 
destined. Our earthly life is a barren land between 
two oceans of eternity. He explained the radiant 
loveliness of childhood by its reflexion of the light 
of that immortal country whence the child came; 
then, as we grow older, we become more callous, 
more deaf to heavenly voices, more blind to celestial 
visions. 


86 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


There is something inexpressibly lovely about 
children. The soft hair, the brilliant eyes, the radi- 
ant skin, shining as if there were some light behind 
it, the fresh innocence and trusting confidence of the 
mind. There is an inescapable sadness in gazing at 
a child, and thinking not merely of the decay of its 
bodily beauty, but of the coarsening and hardening 
process which its mind must experience. The hor- 
rible words it will hear, the disgusting sights it will 
see, the harshness and cruelty it will experience, the 
general roughness associated inevitably with earthly 
existence. It is like seeing some beautiful picture 
blurred by a coarse hand. Wordsworth has ex- 
pressed all this in his great poem. 


There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore;— 
Turn wheresoe’er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 
‘The Rainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the Rose, 
The Moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare, 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth; 
But yet I know, where’er I go, 
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. 


LIFE 87 


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
Upon the growing Boy, 
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows 
He sees it in his joy; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 


Yet, even in the rough give-and-take of mature 
life, even in the absorption of daily cares and wor- 
ries, there are moments, exceptional moments, when 
we hear the divine whisper, and see the heavenly 
vision. 

Hence, in a season of calm weather, 
Though inland far we be, 
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore, 


The inevitable course of human existence supplies 
one reason for the necessity of the life of the spirit. 


88 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Although the body grows worse, although the mind 
is hardened and toughened by daily contact with 
affairs, the life of the soul may yet remain fresh and 
beautiful. We must keep the connexion between 
our hearts and the Divine Ideal. In this way, and 
in this way alone, can one live the spiritual life. 

Time that can and must be snatched from the 
importunate struggle for existence, should be spent 
in keeping the overhead connexion free. The life 
of the spirit can be nourished and stimulated like 
any other life. And those happy moments, of which 
Wordsworth speaks, will more frequently occur. 

Jesus put the spiritual life first. Your Heavenly 
Father knoweth that ye have need of food and drink 
and clothing; but don’t spend all your time and 
thought on those things! Never was there such a 
craze about food and drink as now; so that it seems, 
as if Jesus in saying ironically What shall we eat? 
What shall we drink? were thinking especially of us. 
Thousands are completely absorbed in ‘‘dieting,” in 
this or that method of hygiene. Millions are en- 
gaged in the hopeless undertaking of trying to look 
young. Jesus gave earthly affairs their proper em- 
phasis; but he put the spirit—the only thing that 
distinguishes humanity from beasts—first. 

His remark to the sufferer from paralysis is illu- 
minating. They brought to him one sick of the 
palsy, the word meaning in the old translation 
exactly the opposite of what it means today. The 
invalid was not shaking; he could not move at all. 


LIFE 89 


He was paralysed. The crowd awaited the words 
of Jesus with intense curiosity. How acute their 
disappointment, how sharp their disdain, when he 
said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee!’ They thought it 
-was his legs, not his soul, that required attention. 
Jesus read their hearts, as on earth he would now 
read the hearts of those who wish to turn churches 
into soup-kitchens. 

Many people today ridicule religious ideas, be- 
cause they know nothing of spiritual values. But 
even if the poor all had bathtubs, sanitary plumbing, 
better material surroundings, would they then be 
perfect? Are bodily comforts Life, or merely the 
means of life? 

To be carnally minded, said Paul, is death. The 
seeds of death are in every body and in every 
earthly enterprise. To be spiritually minded, said 
Paul, is life and peace. Peace is worth having. 

That incomparable literary artist, John Bunyan, 
drew a picture of a man with a muckrake. 


This done, and after those things had been somewhat di- 
gested by Christiana and her company, the Interpreter takes them 
apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man 
that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his 
hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crown 
in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his muckrake; 
but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to him- 
self the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor. 


Christiana saw the meaning: “This is the figure of a 
man of this world, is it not, good sir?” 


go ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


It is interesting to observe that not only was the 
man so deeply interested in trivial affairs that he did 
not observe the heavenly; he had worked so long 
with his muckrake that now he could not see the 
crown, even if he wanted to; for his eyes could look 
only downward. He had actually destroyed the 
capacity to live the life of the spirit. 

He was very busy, but he was not truly living. 
He was one who might conceivably gain the whole 
world and lose his life. 

It is difficult in modern environment to keep the 
spiritual life glowing, but it can be done. Many 
have fled away to inaccessible mountains, to lonely 
towers, to complete isolation; but they carried them- 
selves along, and the struggle between the tem- 
porary and the eternal went on just the same. 
Modern activities, though they are likely to smother 
the flame of the spirit, are not necessarily opposed 
to it. To the spiritual mind nothing is more accessi- 
ble than God. ‘To the discerning eye, there is as 
much poetry in the streets of New York as in snow- 
clad mountains. ‘The beauties of Nature are wher- 
ever we are, if we look for them. I have seen as 
splendid sunsets in the city as in the country; and 
the most beautiful rainbow I ever beheld spread its 
glory for me as I sat on the top of a London omni- 
bus, rolling through a squalid street. How glad I 
am that my eyes were not so constituted as to be 
able to look only downward! 

The true mystic—and every human being should 


LIFE 91 


be a mystic at heart—is never far from God. We 
can live the life of the spirit as well in summer as in 
winter, in city and country, in Europe and in 
America. Even though we travel away thousands 
of miles, we are never far from those we love. 
Their presence is more real to us than the scenery 
outside the train windows. Sometimes it seems as 
if we were united to home and friends by an 
elastic band—the farther we go, the tighter it pulls. 

Once having lived the life of the spirit, we do not 
mean to lose it, for we know that it is the only thing 
that stands any chance to survive the final catas- 
trophe of death. The worldly things we set our 
hearts upon are perishable; but if we are connected 
with something eternal, we may share its indestructi- 
bility. Nor does a hearty, sensible, devoted spiritual 
life diminish one’s enjoyment and appreciation of 
the beautiful and interesting things in this world. 
Just the contrary: spiritual capacity gives direction 
and significance to every form of life. 

Twelve days before he died, the poet Coleridge 
wrote this letter to his godchild: 


I, too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and 
advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures 
which learning and intellectual power can give; I now, on the 
eve of my departure, declare to you, and earnestly pray that you 
may hereafter live and act on the conviction, that health is a 
great blessing; competence, obtained by honourable industry, a 
great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have kind, faithful, 
and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all 


92 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be 
indeed a Christian. 


Coleridge was not only a poet, he was perhaps the 
most acute, subtle and profound critic in English 
literature. He saw into the very spirit of every 
work he regarded, and interpreted its inmost mean- 
ing. Was it not the exercise of this same accurate 
faculty of criticism that enabled him, even as he 
separated wheat from chaff in literature, to fasten 
in life upon the one thing of supreme importance? 

It is perhaps impossible to make the reality of the 
spiritual life clear to those who are spiritually dead; 
but those who honestly and sincerely experience it 
would no more exchange it for anything else than 
Beethoven would have bartered music for material 
prosperity. 


VI 
TRUTH 


In a poem by Browning, called 4 Woman's Last 
Word, it is evident that there has been a quarrel 
between husband and wife, in which each has spoken 
frankly—which seldom means pleasantly—to the 
other. This exchange of candour has brought them 
both near the irreparable tragedy of separation. 
Fortunately the wife is the first to see the gulf 
toward which they are slipping; and after compar- 
ing their folly in fighting to the spectacle of two 
small birds bickering on a bough, while overhead the 
hawk awaits the moment to swoop, she asks this 


question: 
What so false as truth is, 


False to thee? 


Now nothing can be falser than the truth, provided 
we distinguish between the truth of accuracy and the 
truth of loyalty. For truth is not only many-sided, 
but truths may actually differ in kind as well as in 
degree. Suppose you told your neighbours the worst 
thing that you know about your best friend; and 
suppose he, on hearing of this, remonstrated angrily 
with you; and suppose your defence was that you 
had told nothing but the truth. Would that justify 
93 


94 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


you? Bynomeans. You have told accurately what 
you know of your friend’s faults; but in doing so, 
you have been false to him and to the ideal of friend- 
ship. You, in speaking only the truth, have been 
untrue. Disloyalty is as black a sin as lying. 

Suppose a professor in a university, or a teller in 
a bank, or a deacon in a church, or a soldier in an 
army, went about telling publicly only the weak or 
evil things that exist in the organisation. Would 
he give a correct picture of general prevailing con- 
ditions, and would he be true to the cause which he 
is employed to help and defend? ‘To those who 
have no sense of precision, and no love of the actual 
truth, there is here no problem at all. ‘The average 
man praises his town, his business, his church, his 
society, and feels no qualms. But to those who hate 
to say the thing which is not true, to those who love 
the absolute truth, a terrible problem confronts 
them in times of stress; shall they state what they 
know to be exact conditions, and thus become dis- 
loyal, or shal] they suppress certain facts in order 
to be true to an organisation? 

During the World War, the vast majority of 
citizens in every country had no problem of this 
kind. They simply supported their own country in 
the struggle, believing apparently that she was one 
hundred per cent right and the enemy one hundred 
per cent wrong. But in every country there was a 
small minority whose eyes were not clouded by par- 
tisanship; their lot was not enviable. 


TRUTH 95 


Furthermore, to take concrete instances, during 
this same war there were a few Americans who kept 
harping on the antagonism shown to the United 
States in past years by Great Britain. They were 
remonstrated with as traitors; and when they said 
that their remarks were true, the statement was not 
denied, but it was insisted that now when America 
and England were united in a life-and-death struggle 
against Germany, it was necessary to say nothing 
that would tend to lessen the efficiency of the allies. 

I repeat that those few who love accuracy as a 
miser loves money, find themselves in wartime faced 
by one of the most difficult problems that can oppress 
an honest and candid mind; how far shall I sacrifice 
the truth of precision to the truth of loyalty? 
Happy are those perhaps to whom such questions 
never come; but clear-eyed people suffer when reason 
is eclipsed by passion. Still, this is only one of the 
great problems of life. To every man who is both 
honest and loyal, daily existence is full of problems, 
which must be met and solved with that limited abil- 
ity with which human nature is endowed. Some- 
times what looks like cowardly compromise is 
really the resultant of two forces working in a 
noble mind. 

Mere precision is not only often disloyal, it is 
sometimes sadly misrepresentative of actual condi- 
tions. Mark Twain said that the surest way to 
convey misinformation was to tell the exact truth. 
The best story illustrating this is where the captain 


96 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


of a ship wrote in the log, ‘“Mate was drunk today.” 
When the mate became normal, he was terribly cha- 
grined and angry; he pled with the captain; he de- 
clared that he had never been drunk before, that he 
would never drink again. But the captain said that 
he had set down in the log only the truth. Then the 
mate begged to have the record struck out, because 
it would mean his ruin when they arrived in port; he 
would never be able to get a berth again. The cap- 
tain was inexorable—‘“‘in this log we write the exact 
truth.” Next week the mate kept the log, and he 
wrote “Captain was sober today.” It was the exact 
truth. 

There is a flourishing and popular philosophy 
known by the name “as if.” This tells its adherents 
that although they may not believe in God, or in the 
story of Jesus Christ, or in any objective reality in 
religion, they should all act as if these things were 
true. Those who can really be satisfied with such 
a philosophy are as deficient intellectually as those 
who can see nothing wrong with their country, busi- 
ness, and family. The majority of honest men can- 
not be either satisfied or stimulated by such a doc- 
trine. 

Paul knew better. ‘“‘If in this life only we have 
hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” 
When one is a child, it is well enough to swallow 
myths, fairy tales, and illusions; but when one be- 
comes a man, one cannot be satisfied with childish 
things. 


TRUTH 97 


Shall we be true to ourselves or true to an ideal? 
No man ever made any real progress along the right 
road by being true to himself. N’o one rises in the 
moral or spiritual world except by trying to be true 
to something outside himself. Is the shipman true 
to himself, or true to the chart and compass? Is 
the builder true to himself, or true to the drawn 
plan? 

Consider for a moment some universally known 
advice which an aged father gave to his son, in 
which the climax is reached in the injunction to be 
true to himself. Polonius said to Laertes, 


Give thy thoughts no tongue, 

Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. 

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. 

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel... . 
Neither a borrower nor a lender be: ... 

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice: ... 
This above all: to thine own self be true, 

And it shall follow, as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any man. 


The most subtle remark ever made concerning Po- 
lonius was uttered by Coleridge: ‘‘Polonius is the 
personification of the memory of wisdom no longer 
possessed.”’ ‘This speech to his son, on the latter’s 
departure from home, is the residuum of worldly 
prudence lying in the old man’s brain like stagnant 
water. 

These precepts are recited at school, learned by 


98 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


heart and approved today, as though they contained 
the essence both of wisdom and morality. 

As a matter of fact they contain little wisdom 
and no morality. ‘They represent the quintessence 
of selfishness. They imply only a regard for conse- 
quences, instead of uncalculating nobility of conduct. 
John Stuart Mill said that a man’s love of the truth 
should always be greater than his fear of conse- 
quences. This is a stiff doctrine, because it has the 
inflexibility of the ideal. 

Polonius’s advice to Laertes sounds like the ad- 
vice of a shrewd and socially successful college Sen- 
ior to an ambitious Freshman. It is concerned en- 
tirely with “getting on.’ Wear the right clothes, 
don’t talk much, pick your friends with the greatest 
care. Don’t say anything, don’t go anywhere, don’t 
do anything, without first considering what effect 
these things will have on your progress toward pop- 
ularity. For those whose religion is Success, for 
those to whom discretion is the better part of 
valour, for those whose cardinal virtue is Prudence, 
the words of Polonius will seem wise and fine. But 
great souls know there is something better than 
“getting on,’ something finer than success, and many 
virtues grander than prudence. 

Sometimes it seems as if the most despicable man 
in the world were the canny man. Canniness is 
often a vice masquerading as a virtue. The shrewdly 
calculating individual may be envied by the down- 
trodden and unfortunate, but he is not nearly so 


TRUTH 99 


fine as a generous, lovable, unselfish man, even 
though the latter may be and is more easily de- 
ceived. 

But let us look at the famous and climactic con- 
clusion of the paternal precepts of Polonius: 


This above all: to thine own self be true, 
And it shall follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 


Fortunately for the truth, we know what happened; 
we know exactly whither the following of this ad- 
vice led Laertes. We know therefore that the last 
line is a lie. Laertes was true to himself, true to 
his own nature; and instead of this truth-to-self 
making it impossible for him to be false to any 
other man, he was false to Hamlet, whom he be- 
trayed and murdered by a cowardly trick. Being 
true to himself led him into a quagmire of false- 
hood, deceit, and treachery, ending in his own ruin. 

The love of truth is the intellectual passion of the 
twentieth century; in this respect, the present age, 
with all its sins, is nearer ultimate morality, nearer 
true religion, nearer God, than any other period. 
There is always something noble about truth-lovers; 
there is something inexpressibly sublime about those 
who have died for what they believe to be true. The 
pursuit of truth elevates every scientist and every 
mystic. ‘he old saying is a fine one—if God held 
in his right hand all truth, and in his left hand the 
search for it, I would take the left. 


100 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


But even the love of truth requires for its justi- 
fication a philosophical or religious basis. Mere 
love of truth cannot be made into a religion. It 
won't work. It becomes as sentimental and un- 
demonstrable as a superstition. I have heard noble- 
minded men, who yet do not believe in God or the 
Bible or the Christian religion, say that we must 
follow the truth, no matter whither it leads us. Even 
though the pursuit of truth should lead us into 
misery, and sorrow, and destruction, still we must 
follow it. I asked one of these men, for whom I 
had high respect, ‘‘Do you believe in religion | ”” The 
answer was negative. “Do you believe in the fu- 
ture life?’ Again, No. 

Hence his uncompromising deification of truth, 
however brave and noble, cannot be successfully de- 
fended. If the word God has no meaning, and 
there is no future life, it is not consistent or reason- 
able to say that every man should follow the truth 
even if it lead him into disaster. Such advice is 
merely sentimental. But those who believe in God 
and that He rules this world can honestly and 
fearlessly believe in and follow the truth, no mattter 
how much they may suffer by such a course; for they 
believe that God and truth are identical, and that 
the steady pursuit of truth brings them ever nearer 
to God. Every Christian has a philosophical reason 
for loving the truth. 

A man without any religion or definite philosophy 
would be foolish to sacrifice his life for what he be- 


TRUTH IOI. 


lieved to be true. If his only guide is common sense, 
he should preserve his health and comfort at all 
hazards. ‘Thus I perfectly understand why George 
Moore remarked that of all the futile persons in the 
history of the world, the religious martyrs were the 
most futile; and I not only understand but approve 
of the position taken by H. L. Mencken, who said 
that rather than suffer torture or death, he would 
cheerfully subscribe to any religious or political 
creed, no matter how absurdly untrue he secretly 
believed it to be. I mean that from his standpoint 
of pure common sense, such a position is more de- 
fensible than that of one who without any faith or 
any religious hope insists that we should all suffer 
and die for the truth. Why should we? 

Religion is not only a comfort to those who are 
old, and poor, and sick; it is the only thing that 
gives significance to daily living. 

The mind guided by reason and the love of truth 
has certain sources of satisfaction which are not to 
be confused with intellectual snobbery. ‘This sat- 
isfaction was well expressed by Lucretius, who is 
quoted in Bacon’s famous essay as follows: ‘“‘It is 
a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships 
tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the win- 
dow of a castle, and to see a battle and the adven- 
tures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable 
to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth 
(where the air is always clear and serene) and to see 
the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, 


102 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


in the vale below: so always (adds Bacon) that this 
prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. 
Certainly, it is a heaven upon earth, to have a man’s 
mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn 
upon the poles of truth.” 

What it took a combination of two massive minds 
to say in a whole paragraph was expressed better 
by Jesus Christ in one sentence. 


Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. 


A knowledge of the truth emancipates us from the 
slavery of fear, ignorance, error, superstition, and 
passion. Those who dwell in ignorance and in error 
are under bondage. ‘The history of humanity is the 
history of error, folly, and delusion. The warfare 
of science with religion is a favourite subject, and 
those who discourse upon it usually take pleasure 
in pointing out the crimes committed in the name of 
religion. very one knows that the history of re- 
ligion is largely the history of superstition, ignor- 
ance, intolerance, and cruelty; but is this the fault 
of religion or of humanity? ‘The history of science 
is no more flattering than the history of religion. 
No one admires scientific men and physicians more 
than I; but just as the history of religion is largely 
the history of its bastard sister, superstition, so the 
history of medicine is largely the history of quackery; 
the remedy was often worse than the disease. A pa- 
tient lay in bed suffering tortures, while the doctors 
gathered around him with astrological charts, and 


TRUTH 103 


gave him treatment whose only redeeming feature 
was that it shortened his life and hence put an end to 
his sufferings. Until comparatively recent times 
patients were bled when they needed blood, and I 
myself can easily remember when those suffering 
from tuberculosis were confined in rooms without 
a breath of fresh air, when fresh air was the one 
essential aid toward recovery. Shall we therefore 
condemn the science of medicine? By no means. 
The history of religion and the history of science 
indicate the gradual disengagement of mankind 
from error, folly, and delusion; the moment man 
knew the truth, that moment he was free. 

Ignorance is slavery, truth is freedom. To an 
ignorant savage a total eclipse of the sun may be 
a hideous terror, while to an enlightened individual 
it is an incomparably beautiful spectacle. 

The finest tribute ever paid to the power of truth 
is in the first book of Esdras in the Apocrypha, 
where three men compete for the prize, which is 
to be awarded to him who can name the strongest 
thing in the world. The first said, Wine is the 
strongest, and gave excellent illustrations; the sec- 
ond said, The King is the strongest, and gave many 
instances; the third said, Woman is the strongest, 
but above all things Truth beareth away the victory. 
Truth is not only more convincing than anything 
else, it has a power of endurance greater than any- 
thing else in the world. 

When Jesus stood before Pilate, he had no fear, 


104 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


because he knew that the truth would last longer 
than the Roman Empire. 

Pilate asked him if he were really the king of the 
Jews, and Jesus answered 


My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of 
this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be 
delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence. 

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? 
Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. ‘To this end 
was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I 
should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the 
truth heareth my voice. 


The Roman governor did not understand Jesus; but 
is he understood today by kings, presidents, emper- 
ors, governors, potentates, and diplomats? Pilate 
naturally thought that the best way to settle any 
disputed question was by force; and that if you had 
enough force, you could conquer and keep the whole 
world indefinitely in submission. 

Jesus came into the world as a representative of 
something mightier than physical force and more 
enduring than armies and navies—the truth. The 
universe is based on the law of moral and spiritual 
truth, and while those who fight it, like Napoleon, 
may not be so instantly defeated as they would be 
if they fought the law of gravitation, they will cer- 
tainly be defeated in the end. Truth can never be 
suppressed by force, although the experiment has 
been tried. 

Jesus was a physically helpless prisoner, who 


TRUTH 105 


stood in unarmed isolation before a governor who 
represented the whole force of the Roman Empire; 
but Jesus was tranquil, because His own kingdom 
was built on an unshakable foundation—the truth. 
Empires are mortal. Where is the Roman Empire 
today? My own feeble individual life has embraced 
the history of the once puissant German Empire. 
I was born before the German Empire was estab- 
lished and I am living after its dissolution. Empires 
may be strong, but they don’t last. 

Pilate did not understand Jesus when he said 
that he was a witness to the truth, nor did he under- 
stand him when he said that his kingdom was not 
of this world. How could there be a kingdom not 
of this world? And how could any kingdom main- 
tain its ascendancy or even its existence without 
fighting? But Jesus said that if his kingdom were 
of this world, then would his servants fight; the 
reason he had no army and navy at his back was 
because his kingdom could not advance and maintain 
itself by force, it could not oppress men from with- 
out, but must work its way silently through the 
hearts of individuals. The kingdom of God is what 
Jesus taught us to pray for, in the phrase, ‘Thy 
Kingdom come.” And it is coming. 

As indicated by the answer of Jesus to Pilate, the 
kingdom of God has laws and rules different from 
those that govern earthly kingdoms, empires, and 
republics. Love and goodwill take the place of 
fear and compulsion; those who make the most ex- 


106 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


tensive conquests for this kingdom must make the 
largest sacrifices. The enemy is not overcome by 
superior force, he is disarmed by kindness; he is 
turned not into a more formidable foe, or into a 
captive raging with resentment, he is turned into a 
permanent member of the league. For the real and 
only lasting league- of nations is the Christian 
Church. 

The Christian method is not only the opposite of 
predatory; it does not concern itself even with 
scrupulous justice. It never says, How much can [ 
get? or, How much do you owe me? But How 
much can I give? Christianity begins where justice, 
legality, and respectability leave off. 

“My kingdom is not of this world.” Jesus 
founded a society, which has rules of its own, and 
we are all invited to join. Te become a Christian, 
one may or may not believe in a system of dogmas; 
one may or may not have a certain theory as to the 
creation of the world and the origin of man; these 
things are subordinate. Jesus did not say that we 
must subscribe to all the articles in a written creed— 
he said, Follow me. It cannot be insisted or empha- 
sised too often that Christianity is a personal re- 
ligion; it does not concern itself with an attitude 
toward history, science, or theology, but with devo- 
tion to a Leader, who walked and talked in Pales- 
tine. One qualifies for this society by loving, be- 
lieving in, and trying to follow Jesus—he was not a 
creed, but a person. 


TRUTH 107 


Just as secret societies have certain rules that 
the members pledge themselves to obey and observe, 
just as an American will do certain things and not 
do certain things because he is an American, so the 
true followers of Jesus will endeavour to live up 
to the laws of his kingdom. One should endeavour 
to regulate one’s daily life and activities by that and 
that alone. If we could do this, there would be less 
glaring inconsistency between what we profess and 
what we perform. If we submitted every course of 
action to that test! “I am a Christian—this means 
that I must do certain things and must not do cer- 
tain things.” ‘The less we talk about it and the more 
we live up to it, the greater will be our influence. 
There is no propaganda, there is no advertising, 
that compares with conduct. 

‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came 
I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my 
voice.” Ultimate truth has never been revealed to 
mankind, possibly because the search for it is more 
necessary to man’s development than the knowledge 
of it. As we grow older, we make less and less de- 
mands on life and on knowledge. The child cries 
for the moon, the youth wants the earth, but the 
old man is content with less. So in the vast fields 
of knowledge. The most dogmatic and confident 
people should always be young. Wise old men are 
never intolerant. Intolerance is the green fruit of 
the intellect; it springs from ignorance plus assure 


108 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


ance. The intellect should ripen in mellow old age. 
Then we discover that there is no such thing as the 
possession of absolute truth any more than there is 
absolute liberty. 

Jesus came as a witness to the truth, but he did 
not give us complete truth—only enough to shape 
our course. 


Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see 
The distant scene: one step enough for me. 


We do not know much about the future life, but we 
know the best way to live here and now. The differ- 
ence between absolute and practical knowledge is 
illustrated by two pilots. One, who was hired to 
take a vessel out of a harbour was asked if he knew 
every rock in the estuary, and he replied confidently 
that he did. No sooner had he spoken than the boat 
struck a rock, and he said, ‘‘There’s one now.” 
Another pilot, on another occasion, on being asked 
the same question, said he did not know where the 
rocks were. ‘‘Then how can you take out the 
boat?” He replied, “I know the channel.” 

After all, while the knowledge of ultimate truth 
is hidden from us, and theological and philosophical 
dogmas are in reality nothing but guesswork, prac- 
tical truth, the best course of action, the channel of 
progress for individuals, societies, and nations, has 
been revealed by Jesus Christ. . 

‘‘Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” 
I do not believe that Jesus shouted that speech. I 


TRUTH 109 


think he spoke quietly as one speaks from knowledge. 
The louder one yells his beliefs, the more uncertain 
is he of their truth. He is roaring to convince him- 
self or to impose his opinions on others. Certainty 
begets serenity. 

In one of George Herbert’s most beautiful 
poems, The Collar, he represents himself as in re- 
bellion against the rules of the kingdom of God. 
I will not sacrifice myself so much, I will do as 
others do, I will enjoy the pleasures of the senses, I 
will have my own way, I will this and I will that: 


I struck the board, and cry’d, No more! 
I will abroad. 
What? Shall I ever sigh and pine? 

My lines and life are free, free as the rode, 
Loose as the winde, as large as store. 
Shall I be still in suit? 

Have I no harvest but a thorn 
To let me bloud, and not restore 
What I have lost with cordiall fruit? 
Sure there was wine 
Before my sighs did drie it. There was corn 
Before my tears did drown it. 
Is the yeare onely lost to me? 
Have I no bayes to crown it? 
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? 
All wasted? 


Not so, my heart! But there is fruit, 
And thou hast hands, 
Recover all thy sigh-blown age 
On double pleasures. Leave thy cold dispute 
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, 
Thy rope of sands, 


110 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee 
Good cable, to enforce and draw, 
And be thy law, 
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. 
Away! Take heed; 
I will abroad. 
Call in thy death’s head there. Tie up thy fears. 
He that forbears 
To suit and serve his need 
Deserves his load. 
But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde 


At every word, 
Me thought I heard one calling, Childe! 
And I reply’d, My Lord. 


Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. In 
the midst of the tumult of prejudices, and passions, 
and hatreds, and selfish desires, we may hear the 
quiet voice speaking the truth. As the voice of Jesus 
calmed the stormy waves of Galilee, so his voice of 
truth can calm the tempestuous passions of the hu- 
man heart. Error and evil desire cannot live if 
we listen to the truth. 

Jesus knew that Pilate had dominion over his 
body, and that his body could be crucified; but he 
knew that Pilate could not destroy the truth. Thus 
while we can never attain the complete serenity of 
the Master, we can have the assurance that no mat- 
ter how dark the world may look, or how many dis- 
couragements there may be for the cause of Chris- 
tianity, the truth to which Jesus bore witness will 
ultimately prevail. 


TRUTH III 


It is the fashion now to ridicule Browning for 


saying 
God’s in his Heaven 


All’s right with the world! 


But what is meant by that poem is simply this. The 
sun rises; everything in the world takes its appointed 
place: the lark’s on the wing: the snail’s on the 
thorn: the hillside’s dew-pearled. Just as surely as 
this is an orderly natural and physical universe, 
where things take their appointed places and un- 
consciously follow the course of natural law, so is 
it a moral and spiritual universe. All is not well 
with the world, far from it; but all is right. The 
universe is founded on righteousness, and cannot 
be shaken. This is the truth. It is all we know on 
earth, and all we need to know. 


Vil 
WOMEN 


Although women are necessary to the welfare, 
progress and success of the Church, and although 
they are tireless workers in Church and Sunday 
School and tireless listeners to tiresome preachers, 
they seldom receive compliments from the pulpit. 
On the contrary: women are more often preached 
at than praised. Paul, who knew less about women 
than about anything else, was the first Christian 
minister to make the vain attempt of putting 
‘‘woman in her place’; and many modern pastors, 
with no more knowledge, and considerably less abil- 
ity, have embarked on the same fruitless and peril- 
ous enterprise. Women have been denounced from 
the pulpit for their hair, their hats, and their gowns; 
a subject on which the only man qualified to speak 
is not a clergyman, but a tailor. 

It is high time that some preacher showed a little 
chivalry; and I, an amateur instead of a profes- 
sional, will now do so. Women who read this ser- 
mon will find something to their advantage. 

I like the retort made by a woman novelist to a 


critic. He: ‘‘Most women have no sense of hu- 
II2 


WOMEN 113 


mour.” She: “Well, what of it? Most men have 
no sense at all.”” If this be true, it might be histori- 
cally accounted for by the child’s version of what 
happened in the Garden of Eden. ‘God made 
Adam and he was very lonely, so God put him to 
sleep, took out his brains and made a woman.” 

‘Hope not for mind in woman,” said the poet 
Donne; but when he wrote that, he was not looking 
for mind. 

In the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs, there 
is a sketch of the Ideal Woman, in the form of a 
“character.” ‘This is one of the earliest specimens 
of the class of literature known as Character-books, 
preceding Overbury, Earle, and La Bruyére by 
about two thousand years. 


Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above 
rubies. 

The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that 
he shall have no need of spoil. 

She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. 

She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her 
hands. 

She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from 
afar. 

She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to 
herthousehold, and a portion to her maidens... . 

She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth 
forth her hands to the needy. 

She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her 
household are clothed with scarlet. 

She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is 
silk and purple. 


114 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the 


elders of the land.... 
Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice 


in time to come. 
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is 


the law of kindness. 
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth 


not the bread of idleness. = 
Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, 


and he praiseth her. 


This kind of woman is by no means obsolete; I know 
farmers’ wives in the country, and mothers in the 
city, whom the quoted verses accurately describe. 

Fashions change, manners change, the idea of 
beauty in anatomy, architecture, and in all the arts 
changes, but character does not change. Courage, 
courtesy, honesty, consideration for others have 
always been the characteristics of the ideal man; 
modesty, amiability, gentleness have always char- 
acterised the ideal woman. 

Clever young women who think the surest way 
to popularity is through shock, would do well to 
remember that the essentials of character are the 
same in all times and places. I remember, in a 
once famous farce called 4 Trip to Chinatown, a 
dialogue between a pretty girl whose facial charm 
was exceeded only by her audacity, and an unscrup- 
ulous man of the world. She asked him several 
questions: ‘‘You find me beautiful? fascinating? 
brilliant ? you like to be with me?” To all of which 


WOMEN 115 


enquiries she received an emphatic affirmative reply. 
Then she asked, ‘And you would like to marry me, 
wouldn’t you?” ‘Not for gold or precious stones.” 
If an honest man is the noblest work of God, a 
good woman is the finest. In The Ring and the 
Book, the old Pope gives various illustrations show- 
ing the attainable altitude of humanity. What is 
the most godlike quality in the human race? Is it 
brains, courage, inventive power, knowledge? He 
finds it in the sheer loveliness of character displayed 
in an ignorant girl, Pompilia. 
Everywhere 
I see in the world the intellect of man, 
That sword, the energy his subtle spear, 
The knowledge which defends him like a shield, 
Everywhere; but they make not up, I think, 
The marvel of a soul like thine, earth’s flower, 
She holds up to the softened gaze of God! 


It is a rather curious fact that in the Old Testa- 
ment the most famous women are villains, and in 
the New Testament the leading woman characters 
are saintly. I need only mention Jezebel and De- 
lilah; Athaliah, more terrible than an army with 
banners; after these sinister persons, come Jael the 
murderer, and Deborah who glorified the cowardly 
deed; even the lovely and charming Ruth excelled 
chiefly in what is a second-rate virtue, obedience. 
But the New Testament women are immortal in 
their spiritual beauty. Mary the immaculate 
mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, the reformed 


116 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


harlot; Martha and her sister Mary, the first repre- 
sentatives respectively of low and high church; the 
woman of Samaria who spread the news of the liv- 
ing water; the sick woman who touched the hem of 
Christ’s garment; the poor widow who contributed 
all her fortune and her heart with it; the woman 
who was content with crumbs from the Master’s 
table; the woman who publicly blessed Christ’s 
mother; the women who followed Him to the cross, 
stayed there, and were the first to visit the tomb. 

In addition to these, the work of Peter and of 
Paul could not have been successful without the 
support of woman. Women were just as necessary 
to the early church as they are now. 

I do not understand why the fact that more 
women than men go to church should be regarded 
as counting against its value. ‘The fact itself is 
more damaging to the men who stay away than it 1s 
to the church; but why should an assemblage of 
persons where women predominate connote intel- 
lectual inferiority? One minister complained to 
another that he could not get men to come to his 
services; and asked for his advice. ‘The other said, 
“Why, last Sunday I preached to an enormous audi- 
ence composed entirely of men.” It was in the 
county jail. 

The truth is that the proportionate worth of any 
undertaking is usually indicated by the excess of 
women over men who are interested in it. First- 
class music is surely not despicable; at orchestra 


WOMEN 117 


concerts the women vastly outnumber the men. Art 
exhibitions are not for silly and stupid people; there 
are ten women to one man who show their interest 
by attendance. On the other hand, at a prize-fight 
the men still outnumber the women; and at a cock- 
fight I am informed there are scarcely any women 
at all, and those few disguised in men’s clothes; 
so that their presence and support will seem natural. 

Foreign missions, city and country churches, mu- 
nicipal orchestras, public libraries, art museums, 
could not possibly exist without the constant and 
enthusiastic support of women. Musicians, preach- 
ers, poets, and painters, if they depended for their 
living on masculine aid, would starve. 

It is often said that the interests of women are 
petty; that they read in the newspapers only the 
Social Column and the Fashion Page. Even if this 
is true, men’s interests are hardly on a grander 
scale; for men will read with avidity five columns 
in fine print consisting of details connected with 
upper-cuts, left-hooks, and side-stepping. 

It is just that women should support Christianity, 
for they owe their present independence more to 
Christianity than to anything else. Consider the 
position of women among Pagans, Mohammedans, 
American Indians, and heathen in general; and 
contrast that with their status in Christian coun- 
tries. When Lafcadio Hearn lectured on English 
poetry to Japanese students at Tokio, he had con- 
siderable difficulty in explaining to them the conven- 


118 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


tional worshipful attitude maintained by English 
poets to women. 

Women love religion, music, art, and poetry be- 
cause they instinctively know that those things are 
immortal, whereas forms of government, politics, 
stock quotations, are ephemeral. Women do not 
have to be told that music and all forms of im- 
perishable beauty are interesting; they know it. 
There is an instinct in women that leads them in- 
fallibly to choose and possess the best things in life. 

If you wish to interest the average man in some 
enterprise, you must show him there is something 
in it making for his personal material advantage, or 
at all events for the practical welfare of the commu- 
nity; but the average woman will respond to an ap- 
peal based on beauty or nobility. 

It used to be said by those opposed to granting 
political privileges to women, that in war they were 
anyhow inferior; for war was exclusively man’s 
business. But since the days of Florence Nightin- 
gale—and even Lytton Strachey’s adroit wit has 
not been able to darken her fame—we know that 
man has succeeded in making war the business of 
women. Women do go forth to the scene of battle; 
but instead of going out to destroy, they go out to 
heal and restore. The Red Cross, the Hospital 
Nurses, illustrate how women, by crucifying them- 
selves, have saved men. 

In The Princess, Tennyson, although old-fash- 
ioned and over conservative, was eternally right in 


WOMEN 11g 


insisting on the natural fact that woman and man 
are different. ‘‘Woman is not the lesser man,”’ but 
quite another thing. ‘Thus the attempts of women 
to resemble men are as vain as they are silly. Why 
on earth should a woman want to be like a man? 
Yet Tennyson, in a few lines that should be read 
at every marriage-service, said that men and women 
must learn from each other. 

Men should acquire sympathy and tenderness 
without losing virility; women should acquire under- 
standing and the unprejudiced breadth of outlook 
that is born only of intelligence. 

Women ought to cultivate their mental powers; 
much more than they do now. It is a true indict- 
ment against women that giving them the vote in 
national politics has produced no appreciable effect 
——-which means that they have manifested no in- 
tellectual independence. There is no reason women 
should vote the same ticket as that voted by their 
husbands and fathers; let them think for themselves. 

They have not, in the main, taken the privilege 
of the ballot seriously. They ought to qualify for 
citizenship by hard and faithful study of public 
questions. The League of Women Voters has done 
much; but there are more men today who can tell 
why they vote a certain ticket than there are women. 

Amiability is an attractive virtue; but in matters 
of opinion, based on knowledge, women, especially 
American women, are, I think, too amiable for their 
intellectual welfare. If some one asks you if you 


120 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


have read a certain book, why lie about it and say 
you have? Why apologise? There is no occasion 
for either falsehood or shame. 

In short, what women need is more intellectual 
independence, and the courage that comes from it. 
Many sons love their mothers, and regard their 
Opinions as of no importance. ‘‘Mother doesn’t 
know anything about it.” I like to see a family 
where the boys not only love and caress their 
mother, but where her mind and knowledge are 
sufficiently good to command the respect of her off- 
spring. 

In his gossipy poem, Old Pictures in Florence, 
Browning makes a comparison between the perfec- 
tion of Greek art and the imperfection of the hu- 
man mind. He says that because Greek art is 
perfect, it reached its goal; it was finished; it there- 
fore cannot develop. The human mind is faulty 
and clumsy, but it is alive: it has within its imper- 
fections the principle of eternal development. 
Therefore when we look at perfect Greek statues, 
we should not repine because our bodies are so far 
short of the ideal human frame; we should rejoice, 
because with all our imperfections, nay because of 
our imperfections, our minds have something finer 
than any form of perfection—the principle of de- 
velopment. 

Too many women are worried or despondent 
about minor matters, while they regard serious de- 


WOMEN [21 


fects with complacency. It is of course important 
that they should look as well as possible, and dress 
as becomingly as their means will allow; but these 
are not the most serious considerations. Many 
women (and men) are keenly concerned about their 
looks and their clothes; am I looking my best to- 
night? are my clothes right? When really they 
should ask themselves, have I got any brains? and 
if not, how shall I supply this deficiency? 

Every one, says Browning, looks at a perfect 
statue, and soliloquises, ‘‘Ah, I wish I looked like 
that!’ a vain and impossible wish. It is difficult, 
by taking thought, that is, by worrying about it, 
to add a cubit to one’s stature or to change the curve 
of one’s nose, or to acquire sudden wealth; but 
every one can improve in mind and character. 

The Pope said of Pompilia that she was just as 
truly an angel living on earth, dressed in her street- 
clothes, as she was in heaven, clad in radiant gar- 
ments. Innocence in love, beauty of aspiration, 
cleanliness in heart, often increase facial beauty. 
Byron, who had had sufficient experience of light 
women, reserved his highest tribute for carefree 
innocence and noble impulses. 


She walks in beauty, like the night 

Of cloudless climes and starry skies, 
And all that’s best of dark and bright 
Meets in her aspect and her eyes, 

Thus mellow’d to that tender light 
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 


122 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


One shade the more, one ray the less 
Had half impair’d the nameless grace 
Which waves in every raven tress 

Or softly lightens o’er her face, 

Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 


And on that cheek and o’er that brow 
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 

The smiles that win, the tints that glow 
But tell of days in goodness spent,— 

A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent. 


Byron’s great contemporary, Wordsworth, 
showed in one of his finest tributes to women that 
their attractiveness did not depend on romantic illu- 
sion; that with the right sort of wife and mother, 
daily intimacy did not lessen personal charm. 

I hope that Hawthorne did not intend his char- 
acter Hilda, in The Marble Faun, to be the ideal 
woman; for toward Hilda I cannot repress a feel- 
ing of aversion. ‘‘Her soul was like a star and 
dwelt apart’; but from the selfish sanctity of its 
seclusion, no real good resulted; no one was aided 
or comforted or inspired in the struggle of life. 
She was no help to sinners; she was their despair. 
She had the purity of an angel, but not the purity 
of a good woman. She was like one who should 
refuse to help a drowning man, for fear of soiling 
her clothes. 

But Wordsworth showed that a good woman 


WOMEN 


123 


need not lose her ideality or her romantic, mysteri- 
ous attraction, even in the daily household duties. 
She could be practical, sagacious, efficient; and yet 
have the fascination of a nymph in the 


light. 


She was a phantom of delight 

When first she gleam’d upon my sight; 
A lovely apparition, sent 

To be a moment’s ornament; 

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; 

Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair; 

But all things else about her drawn 
From May-time and the cheerful dawn; 
A dancing shape, an image gay, 

To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 


I saw her upon nearer view, 

A spirit, yet a woman too! 

Her household motions light and free, 
And steps of virgin-liberty; 

A countenance in which did meet 

Sweet records, promises as sweet; 

A creature not too bright or good 

For human nature’s daily food, 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 


And now I see with eye serene 

The very pulse of the machine; 

A being breathing thoughtful breath, 

A traveller between life and death; 

The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 


moon- 


124 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


A perfect woman, nobly plann’d 

To warn, to comfort, and command; 
And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel-light. 


There is no doubt that the average man has more 
physical strength than the average woman; it does 
not occur to any sensible woman to be ashamed of 
this inferiority. Well, history seems to show that 
in matters of initiative, in creative and administra- 
tive powers, the average man is again superior to 
the average woman. I cannot see why any woman 
should resent this any more than she resents her 
lack of physical strength. 

For in the love of beauty, in ideality, in refine- 
ment, in purity, in accuracy of feeling, women are 
as superior to men as they are inferior in brute 
force. The best way to observe this is to consider 
children. 

The instincts of the average healthy boy are 
mainly bad. Robbers and murderers are his heroes. 
In primary schools—not in colleges—the toughest 
boy is the idol of the others. I remember when I 
was six years old, there was in our room at school 
an absolute young villain, who would have de- 
stroyed the world, had he possessed sufficient power. 
He was vulgar, foul, pugnacious, cruel, and a bully; 
he was our hero. (He is now, I believe, in prison.) 
One day I was behaving badly, and some one said 
to me, “Why, if you go on in this way, you will be 


WOMEN 125 
like Blank!’ My eyes glowed with delight. He 


was my ideal! 

The only way boys—who are savages at heart— 
become decent citizens and fit to live with—is 
through discipline, corporal punishment, public 
opinion, and the grace of God. 

Little girls—very little—while they are not an- 
gelic, and may betray meanness and pettiness, sur- 
pass boys in one important respect; their ideals are 
good. They do not want to grow up and become 
adventuresses and scoundrels, they want to do good, 
help the sick and needy, stimulate the best impulses 
of men. 

So many women have longed to be of use to men, 
have considered it their highest happiness to influ- 
ence men in right directions, that the careers of 
many successful men have been accompanied by the 
sacrifice of women who could not bear to “stand 
in their way.’ I once saw a double-page picture in 
Life. It represented a vast space of deep water; a 
woman was drowning; all that was visible of her 
sinking body was her two hands above the surface; 
a few yards distant, a strong man was rapidly swim- 
ming away from her; and under the picture was the 
one word Success. 

Many of our modern novelists love to expend 
their talents for ridicule and satire on evangelical 
churches, and especially on the organisations of 
women who do most of the work; the Ladies’ Aid 
Society, the Foreign Mission Band, the Sewing Cir- 


126 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


cle, and so on. Now three months of the year, I 
am associated with a small country church in a mid- 
western state. I happen to know the real value of 
the work done by women, and their sacrifices. In 
addition to the housework, they have to wash and 
dress the children, and from afar bring them to 
church and Sunday School; they do all this because 
they know the value of religion in daily life; they 
are not going to have their children brought up in 
ignorance and savagery. 

I hope that in heaven God reserves an especially 
comfortable chair for the oldest daughter in a large 
family. This girl has no youth; from her earliest 
recollection she has always had to “mind the baby.” 
She has to clean up after the younger ones, doing 
all the drudgery of a mother with none of the ma- 
ternal passion that glorifies it. 

Women not only have more passive courage than 
men, such as waiting in solitary anxiety, with none 
of the relief that action brings. They often have 
more of the desperate, reckless courage, that goes 
with the love of adventure. Marriage is an enter- 
prise filled with more peril for a woman than for 
a man; a woman leaves the security of her home, 
and takes a chance with a stranger. No children 
would ever be born if men had to bear them; no 
man could stand the months of inactivity and sick- 
ness, with horrible agony and mortal danger as 
the climax. And if everything then turns out suc- 
cessfully, for three years the mother must know 


WOMEN 127 


every instant in the twenty-four hours of every day, 
exactly where that child is. Are we men really 
worth all that agony and fatigue and boredom? 

Well, there are some men who appreciate their 
mothers and their wives. They appreciate their 
mothers after the mothers are dead; and they ap- 
preciate their wives when they, the men, are sick. 

The position of women as home-makers is also 
appreciated by some bachelors. The great Russian 
novelist, Turgenev, whom George Moore called the 
greatest artist since antiquity, said, “I would give 
up all my fame and all my art if there were one 
woman who cared whether or not I came home late 
to dinner.” 

The Stabat Mater applies not only to the mother 
of Jesus at the cross, it applies to millions of women 
who have ‘“‘stood by” their husbands and their sons. 
The capacity of women to “stand by” can never be 
overestimated; that is why it is such an irreparable 
disaster for a man to lose his mother. A boy may 
be common-place, even stupid, the butt of his school- 
fellows; but there is a woman at home in whose eyes 
he is a romantic hero; one who idealises him; one to 
whom he will never turn in vain. 

An old hymn expresses the universality of Mary’s 
devotion. 

Jews were wrought to cruel madness, 


Christians fled in fear and sadness, 
Mary stood the cross beside: 


128 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


At its foot her feet she planted, 
By the dreadful scene undaunted, 
Till the gentle sufferer died. 


Poets oft have told her story, 
Painters decked her brow with glory, 
Priests her name have deified: 
But no worship, song, or glory, 
‘Touches like the simple story, 
Mary stood the cross beside. 


So when crushed by fierce oppression, 
Goodness suffers like transgression, 
Christ again is crucified: 
But if love be there truehearted, 
By no grief or terror parted, 
We may stand the cross beside. 


Vill 
INTERLUDE 


I know that every reader of this book is a philos- 
opher and a theologian, because every intelligent 
man and woman in the world formulates, at least 
mentally, some conjecture concerning the origin 
of the universe and of human life, and some belief 
about the Supreme Being. Whence am I? Why 
am I? Whither am I going? are three questions 
asked in thought nearly every day even by those 
whose time seems taken up with mundane affairs. 

I am only an amateur preacher. These sermons 
are not delivered from the pulpit and have no cler- 
ical authority; they are more like conversations 
around the church door after the service is over, 
where the talker and his listeners stand on the same 
level. 

I make no apology today for taking you with me 
into that uncharted country called Philosophy. I 
cannot bring you through upon whatever land may 
be beyond, for even the greatest philosophers have 
been compelled to wait for that result until they 
have departed from this world. But at all events 
I can bring us safely back to the ground where we 


now stand; and remember that the chief value of 
129 


130 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


philosophical discussions and inquiries lies in their 
power to challenge thought, and to arouse intellec- 
tual activity—the chief advantage man has over 
beasts, and perhaps his highest and most enduring 
happiness. 

Of all studies, philosophy is at once the most 
fascinating and the most irritating. It is the most 
fascinating, because it opens new and wide vistas 
to the imagination, because it makes the natural and 
visible world more mysterious and interesting, and 
because one man’s guess is as good as another’s; 
no one can prove another is wrong. But to practical 
minds—like Benjamin Franklin’s, for example, 
philosophy is both irritating and futile, because no 
one can make definite progress or reach any goal. 

Let me illustrate it in this way. Suppose you 
start to study French with a teacher. The teacher 
knows more than you do; and you feel certain that 
if you study continuously and faithfully, you will 
eventually become less ignorant. But in philosophy 
the professor knows no more than you, so far as 
ultimate truth is concerned; you can study ten years, 
witihout drawing any nearer to the goal. In ability 
to answer definitely the greatest questions, the pro- 
fessor of philosophy knows no more than the man 
in the street, no more than a dog. He is acquainted 
with the history of speculative thought; he knows 
what former philosophers—now dead—have be- 
lieved; but he can himself give you no verifiable 
knowledge on ultimate truths. 


INTERLUDE 131 


Personally I am grateful for the years I spent on 
philosophy and metaphysics; my eyes and mind were 
opened, my imagination enriched, and the world has 
been far more interesting than if I had not read 
Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Lotze. 

God is one of the most familiar words in every 
language; one sees it in nearly every book, in many 
songs; one hears it every day, with an emphasis 
varying from extreme reverence to the most care- 
less profanity. Yet no one has ever been able com- 
pletely to define it, and no two men have precisely 
the same conception of it. No man hath seen God 
at any time, said the Apostle John. 

Although during the last four or five thousand 
years, there has been an enormous increase in the 
population of human beings, there has been a cor- 
responding decrease in the population of gods. In 
the palmy days of Greece, and later, during the 
domination of the Roman Empire, there were very 
many gods, and of an almost infinite variety. In 
certain places Polytheism is still flourishing; but 
the advance of what we call modern civilisation has 
been fatal to the once lively communities of divine 
beings. From a vast number they have shrunk to 
one, and there are some men and women who say 
there is none at all. 

In making any attempt, however inarticulate, to 
establish one’s own religious belief, or to explain the 
material world, one’s conception of God is of pri- 
mary importance; for that conception not only de- 


] 


132 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


termines one’s mental activity, but may and ought 
to govern and direct one’s daily life in the world of 
action. Nothing more clearly reveals a man’s char- 
acter than his conception of God. One man’s God 
is a tribal deity, who will take vengeance on the 
man’s enemies; another man’s God is a redeeming 
and all-merciful Saviour. 

However deeply tinged with pessimism, the old 
Greek world was assuredly picturesque and roman- 
tic. The sun was a god, the moon another; the sea 
another; every tree and every river was a god. Thus 
a country walk, especially at twilight, must have 
abounded in spiritual companions. I have no doubt 
that many pedestrians distinctly saw gods lurking 
near trees, pools, and rivers. 

The normal Christian child regards God as a big 
man, perhaps the only person who can whip his 
father. I supposed that God was a large masculine 
creature, with a copious white beard, and a sonor- 
ous bass voice. I often looked for him, and of 
course always in one direction; for was not his home 
in the sky? I remember very well one evening, just 
after sunset, when I was looking for him with par- 
ticular ardour, I suddenly saw him. ‘There was 
a little stretch of paling blue between two fluffy 
clouds: and there he was! 

Many philosophers ridicule the so-called anthro- 
pomorphic conception of God; that is, the belief 
that God is a super-man. Of course he may be as 
unlike a man as a lead-pencil is unlike an elephant. 


INTERLUDE 133 


Yet I do not believe it is possible for any of us, 
no matter how intellectually mature, to think of 
God without thinking of Him to some extent in 
terms of humanity. Practically, that is with a view 
to moral action, such a conception, however faulty 
and inadequate, may be of service. 

Suppose my watch, which is now ticking, should 
suddenly become self-conscious, and begin to think. 
Suppose it should ask itself the question, Who made 
me? It would probably believe that some cathedral 
clock made it. That would be grotesquely errone- 
ous; and yet, if the watch prayed, and said, “O 
great and mighty Clock, may I always keep good 
time and never go out of order,” it is conceivable 
that such a petition might be helpful. 

Suppose a Ford car should become self-conscious, 
and ask, Who made me? It would probably be- 
lieve that it had been made by a Pierce-Arrow or 
a Rolls Royce. Such a belief would be very far 
from the truth. But if the Ford car continued to 
be self-conscious—many of them seem so—and 
prayed, “O mighty Pierce-Arrow, may I never get 
a puncture, may I never require cranking,” such as- 
piration might show beneficial results. 

Although there can hardly be a finer conception 
of God than that set forth in the Gospels, human 
theology, in attempting to build a vast superstruc- 
ture on that solid foundation, has made many blun- 
ders. There is no doubt that most Christian people 
today have a nobler conception of God than was 


134 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


common in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eigh- 
teenth centuries. Many people then thought of 
God as a being apart from his world, who gave the 
universe an initial shove some few thousand years 
ago, and never touched it since. One does not have 
to be a pantheist—that is to identify the world with 
God—to believe that God must be in His world 
today. In other words, it is reasonable to believe 
that all life is dependent on its Source. Let me give 
a homely illustration of what I mean. 

When a child goes into a factory and sees a man 
standing in front of every machine, he naturally be- 
lieves that the man runs or stops the machine at will, 
that each machine contains its own source of power. 
But we know that every machine in the factory is 
dependent on the central power, coming from the 
power-house, and that if anything happened to the 
central motive power, every machine in the build- 
ing would stop. Thus philosophers are practically 
unanimous in believing that trees and flowers have 
no separate existence, but that all life is dependent 
and springs from some central power. What is 
this central power? Philosophers call it the Thing- 
in-itself, to distinguish it from its manifestations, 
which we clearly see. No one can prove what the 
Thing-in-itself is, but most intelligent people believe 
that it is. Our attitude toward life and death is 
determined by our attitude toward the Thing-in-it- 
self. 

Well, if all living things in the earth come from 


INTERLUDE 135 


some central power, some Thing-in-itself, what 1s 
the nature of this Thing, this motor, this engine? 
Some say Matter: they are the materialists. 

Herbert Spencer said the Thing-in-itself is “‘an 
infinite and eternal Energy, from which all things 
proceed.” Late in life he consented to spell the 
word Energy with a capital, a large concession for 
Herbert Spencer. I remember when he first did 
this, and an editorial in the Hartford Courant made 
the following comment thereupon. ‘“‘Yet many 
Christian people will regard Energy, even when 
spelled with a capital E, as a poor substitute for 
their Father in Heaven.” 

Jesus Christ said that the Thing-in-itself is Love: 
Intelligent, all-powerful Love. ‘This is the doctrine 
elaborated by the Apostle John, and set forth in the 
nineteenth century by the philosopher Lotze, who 
called the Thing-in-itself ‘Living Love.” It was 
also the firm belief of two leaders of Victorian 
poetry, Tennyson and Browning. Hence, when 
Tennyson wrote 


Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 


he spelled Love with a capital, to indicate that Love 
is the Thing-in-itself. 

If you believe that Love is the motor of the Uni- 
verse, you are in harmony with Christianity, and 
(ultimately) an optimist; if you believe that Blind 
Will controls and drives the universe, you are quite 
logically and naturally a pessimist. 


136 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


It is interesting to observe that the God revealed 
in the New Testament in many respects resembles 
the God proclaimed by the latest researches in mod- 
ern science; and that the conception of God as an 
image removed from man seemed just as silly to 
the prophet Isaiah as it does today. ‘There are two 
passages in the Bible which I like to read in se- 
quence, because they show respectively unintelligent 
and intelligent conceptions of God. I refer to the 
44th chapter of Isaiah and the 17th chapter of 
Acts. There is terrific irony in the old prophet’s 
attack on the childishness of Paganism. 


Isaiah 


Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is 
profitable for nothing? 

The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out 
with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with 
the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according 
to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house. 

He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the 
oak, which he strengtheneth for himself, among the trees of the 
forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. 

Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, 
and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, 
he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven 
image, and falleth down thereto. 

He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he 
eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth 
himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire; 

And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven 
image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth 
unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. 


INTERLUDE 137 


Paul’s address in Athens 


God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that 
he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made 
with hands; 

Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed 
any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all 
things... 

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel 
after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one 
of us; 

For in him we live, and move, and have our being. 


No modern conception of God is more reason- 
able, more scientific, or more dignified than this. 
The infinite and eternal Energy, from which all 
things proceed; or as Tennyson phrases it in his 
poem The Higher Pantheism, 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than 
hands and feet. 

Can you define Faith? A good definition is given 
in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews: Faith is the 
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
not seen. 

Many say that Faith is the opposite of Reason. 
This is to talk nonsense. True faith is not only 
never opposed to reason, it is based on reason. The 
antithesis should never be Faith and Reason, but 
Faith and Knowledge. 

I have heard many say, “I believe in God and 
Christ, but not with my reason.”’ One might as well 
say, “I walk, but not with my legs.” If you attempt 


138 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


to prove to me that you believe without your reason, 
you are using your reason to convince me that you 
are not using it. This is both silly and dangerous; 
for whenever any thinking man opposes his faith 
and his reason, his reason will ultimately win, as it 
ought to. Iam not familiar with Catholic theology; 
but I am sure that the true Catholic believes in his 
religion because he believes that it is more reason- 
able to accept the teachings of the Church than to 
accept the contrary. 

When I was a small boy in Hartford, I went one 
Sunday night to hear a famous and eloquent Bap- 
tist preacher. He declared that Christian faith 
was flatly opposed to reason, and that was why he 
believed it. All Christian ideas about God, said 
he, are contrary to reason; all the greater, there- 
fore, is the triumph of faith, because you make your 
Christian faith conquer your reason. Young as 
I was, I knew he was talking nonsense. 

His subsequent career is interesting and not unin- 
structive. Although he was devout and sincere 
on the night when I heard him, in a few years he re- 
signed from the Christian ministry, then he became 
an agnostic, and wrote against religion; then he be- 
came an atheist; then he became an anarchist; and 
the last I heard of him was that he had joined a 
corrupt political organisation. 

Emotion and passion enter into our faith in God, 
as into our love of country; but in the last analysis, 
if you believe in the Christian religion—as I do with 


INTERLUDE 139 


my whole heart and soul and strength—you believe 
in it because it is a more reasonable explanation of 
the universe and of the person and career of Jesus 
than any other that has been suggested. 

How about our faith in immortality? Of course 
the desire for the future life does not prove that 
such a thing exists. Jesus was certain of it, and 
taught it as a fundamental idea in Christianity. I 
have faith in the future life, for two reasons: be- 
cause the greatest and wisest Person in history be- 
lieved in it and taught it, and because the whole 
universe so far as we can understand it, would be a 
meaningless farce without the future life. It is 
not merely that I myself want to live after death, 
though I certainly do: it is that this wonderful 
world on any other supposition becomes to me a 
nonsensical jumble. 

But while my faith in God and in the future life 
is based on reason, it is still a matter of Faith and 
not of Knowledge. I cannot prove to unbelievers 
that there is a God of Love, and I cannot prove that 
I shall live after death. Knowledge is something 
that can be demonstrated and proved to the satis- 
faction of every reasonable man. It can be verified. 
I know that a straight line is the shortest distance 
between two points. But I cannot prove that there 
is a future life any more than I can prove that I 
shall live until the setting of today’s sun: but I be- 
lieve I shall. 


140 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


How about the doctrine of free will? Tennyson 
wrote 


Our wills are ours, we know not how: 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 


There would not be room in the Congressional 
Library for all the books written on the hotly-con- 
tested doctrine of free will. Yet Tennyson has said 
all we really know about it in two lines. 

President Hadley once remarked, “Theoretically 
I do not believe in the doctrine of free will: but 
practically I do.’’ He meant, I suppose, that when 
you speculate about it, it seems as if the human will 
could not be free; but in everyday life, we act on 
the supposition that it is free. Personally I believe, 
that although human character is to a certain ex- 
tent influenced by heredity and environment, the 
human will is free. Man has choice. When Julius 
Cesar was asked why he would not come to the 
Senate-house, he said 


The cause is in my will: I will not come. 


Is the will free? Let me take two trivial illustra- 
tions. I have a piece of paper in front of me. Shall 
I now drop it in the waste-basket or not? I do: but 
no fatalist can ever convince me that I might not 
have held on to it. I feel certain that I could have 
done and still can do what I please with that piece of 


paper. 


INTERLUDE I41 


I think it wise, before rejecting any idea, to con- 
sider the consequences of rejecting it. For no mind 
can remain in passive objection. If you say you do 
not believe in God, you cannot stop there; you must 
attempt to explain the world without God. Hence 
I believe in the freedom of the will because it seems 
to me unreasonable to believe the contrary. Our 
judgments of history and of individuals, our entire 
framework of jurisprudence, our sensations of re- 
morse, regret, and shame, are based on the idea 
that the will is free. Leave fatalism to pessimists 
and pagans; the Christian should rejoice (reason- 
ably) in freedom. You have no right to condemn 
one man and praise another; you have no right to 
call one brave and another cowardly; you are ridic- 
ulous if you feel remorse or shame for any action: 
unless you believe that other men and yourself could 
have done differently, that is, unless you believe in 
the freedom of the will. There can be no heroism 
and no disgrace, there can be no virtue and no vice, 
unless one believes in the freedom of the will. 

Here is a simple creed: I believe in the Son of 
God as a revelation of Love: I believe in the future 
life: I believe in the freedom of the will. 

But I am not a clairvoyant; I cannot prove these 
things. I have faith in them, faith founded on 
reason. 


Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast betieved: 
blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. 


142 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Few statements are more absurd or dangerous 
than the frequently heard remark, “It does not 
make any difference what you believe, so long as 
you believe it.’ You might just as well say that 
there is no difference between truth and falsehood. 
It makes all the difference in the world what you be- 
lieve, because belief is the spring of action. If you 
earnestly believe that you are on the right road when 
you are not, every step you take leads you farther 
and farther away from where you ought to be. The 
faster and more confidently you walk, the worse 
off you are. Ifa religion is false, the most severely 
orthodox are the furthest from the truth. The his- 
tory of religion is full of bad examples of religious 
sincerity; examples that caused untold misery, suf- 
fering, and slaughter. 

Thus many who have a superficial knowledge of 
comparative religions will often say, “One religion 
is as good as another.” It simply is not so; the 
facts are otherwise. Emancipation from one form 
of religion is sometimes the first requisite step 
toward a fruitful religious life. 

Let me complete the quotation from the Apostle 
John. ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the 
only begotten Son, he who is in the bosom of the 
Father, he hath declared Him.” 

In other words, the clearest revelation that has 
ever come to humanity from a divine source, is in 
the appearance of Jesus Christ. Not so much in 
what he said, as in what he was and is. 


INTERLUDE 143 


And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and 
we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father), full of grace and truth. 


I ardently believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ; 
precisely what his relation to the Father was, I 
cannot tell. But I behold His glory, and I feel 
sure that the glory indicates the Divine source 
whence it came. The sun sets, we see that luminary 
no more, darkness comes on apace. Then the moon 
rises, and two things immediately become evident, 
the second of which is more reassuring than the 
first. The moonlight drives away the darkness and 
quenches many lesser lights of the stars: but the 
true glory of the moon is that it says, ‘““The sun is 
shining.” All its splendour, all its glory, all the 
radiance of its face, come from the light of the sun; 
although we cannot see the sun, the sight of the 
moon in the darkness is the evidence that the sun 
has lost none of its brilliance. 

So in this dark world, where no man has ever 
seen God, and where even the highest conceptions 
of Him must be inadequate, the appearance of 
Jesus is the best evidence not only of God’s exist- 
-ence, but of His love. 


IX 
TRIANGLE 


In the deepening dusk of a January evening at 
the city of Rome, in the year 1698, a young wife and 
mother, only seventeen years old, Pompilia by name, 
was talking with her foster-parents, Pietro and 
Violante. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. 
Pompilia’s middle-aged husband, Count Guido 
Franceschini, accompanied by four hired assassins, 
rushed into the room, and murdered the girl and 
the old pair. Not many miles from the scene, the 
escaping criminals were caught by the police. They 
were brought to trial, and the verdict was Guilty. 
The Count appealed to the Pope, Innocent XII, 
who reafirmed the judgment of the court, and on 
22 February 1698, in the Piazza del Popolo at 
Rome, the Count was beheaded and his four com- 
panions hanged. Such are the facts out of which 
Robert Browning constructed an epic called The 
Ring and the Book. 

Browning represents the aged Pope in solitary 
meditation. Just as he has made up his mind to 
have the five criminals executed, he asks himself, 
on what do I base my judgment of their guilt, and 
indeed my judgment of right and wrong? How 

144 


TRIANGLE 145 


could I call one man good and another evil, if I 
did not have a religion or a philosophy that estab- 
lishes standards, distinguishing between good and 
evil? He then proceeds into an examination of his 
belief in the Christian religion—and it is at this 
point that the discussion turns from a particular 
sordid murder into a question of universal signifi- 
cance. 

Taking the poem as a starting-point, I now pro- 
pose to look into the foundations of Christian faith, 
and to consider some arguments for and against 
it. I have never been, and am not now, afraid of 
the truth. Why should I fear something that I have 
spent my life trying to find? 

Suppose you saw a man with a yardstick, and in 
response to your question, he announced that he 
was going to measure the distance between New 
York and Liverpool. You might laugh. Suppose 
he should tell you that this yardstick was not bought 
at a ten cent store, but from a physics-laboratory, 
and that it was correct to a thousandth of an inch. 
Even so, he could not measure the Atlantic Ocean 
with a yardstick. Likewise it is impossible for our 
finite minds—no matter how accurate they may be 
in small things—to measure infinity. Well, then, 
are we to quit before we have started? By no 
means. 

The sun is more than ninety million miles distant 
from the earth. Yet by so little and simple a thing 
as a watch-crystal, you can draw fire from that im- 


146 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


mense distance and set the grass aflame. So, small 
as our minds are, we can draw enough light and 
heat from the Sun of Righteousness to illumine and 
inspire our whole existence. Many Christian saints 
and heroes have done this; they have not only 
warmed their own souls, they have started spiritual 
conflagrations that the world has not been able to 
extinguish. 

The chief aim of thinking man is to reach God. 
By contemplation of the material works of nature 
and of the human mind, we can obtain a two-fold 
conception of God, we can find two sides of the 
triangle. It seems unreasonable to suppose a uni- 
verse so wonderful could have been planned by 
something less wonderful than itself; that the 
stream should rise above its source. But wonderful 
as Matter is, Mind is far more wonderful. ‘There 
are no two things in the universe more different 
than mind and matter. The brain is a damp sponge 
inside the skull—is it mind, or the tool of mind? 
The psychologists are endeavouring to discover the 
particular parts of the brain used for particular 
thoughts or emotions. Suppose some day they 
should discover this—suppose they should succeed in 
localising brain functions. Then, to put it crudely, 
we should know (say) what whenever we tried to 
remember a name or date, there would be a disturb- 
ance in the back of the brain; if we were suddenly 
angry, the disturbance would be in the left side; if 
we were sorry for something, in the right side; if 


TRIANGLE 147 


a man told a woman he loved her, the front of the 
brain would be active. If all these things were true 
(a large order), even then, the difference between 
memory, anger, remorse, and love on the one hand, 
and the damp sponge on the other, would be greater 
than that between the east and the west. 

Taking then as our two long steps upward toward 
God, the material universe and the human mind, 
and judging God exactly as we judge an architect— 
by the quality of his work, we may ascribe two char- 
acteristics to the Divine Being—Infinite Strength 
and Infinite Intelligence. In other words, we have 
got two of the three necessary attributes for the God 
of the Christian religion, two sides of the necessary 
triangle. 





But while a Being possessed of infinite strength 
and infinite intelligence might be sublime, an object 
of admiration or fear, it is not yet an object of 
worship. ‘The base of the triangle is missing. What 


148 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


is the necessary quality in a being worthy of worship 
and devotion? It is Goodness. 

Well, cannot we obtain sufficient evidence of 
God’s goodness by studying geology and history, 
by reading the newspapers and using our eyes and 
ears? No. 

There are many things in natural and human his- 
tory that indicate goodness in the creator, but there 
are fully as many that indicate the contrary. Sci- 
ence reveals the strength and intelligence of God, 
but tells us nothing of his good will. 

I can admire something that is stronger and wiser 
than I, but I refuse worship unless it is better than 
I. I will not vote for God unless He is a being 
whose love, charity, tenderness, and mercy are in ex- 
cess of my own. And as I contemplate the mighty 
works of nature and the subtlety of the mind of man, 
I find insufficient evidence of the love of God. No- 
body, however powerful and clever, can get my vote 
unless I myself give it. He may destroy me because 
he is bigger—but I won’t vote for him. Not even 
an Infinite Being can change my will, unless I myself 
change it. Human beings, contemptible as they 
are, have yet the power of choice. 

It is not in nature, it is not in scientific textbooks, 
it is not in architecture, it is not even in music that 
I obtain evidence of the love of God. There is only 
one place where I receive the revelation that the 
goodness of God is equal to his strength and intelli- 
gence—that is in the Four Gospels, which tell us 


TRIANGLE 149 


the story of Jesus Christ. Now is the triangle com- 
plete, for its base is Love. 





LOVE 
(NEW TESTAMENT) 


What is the real reason for the appearance of 
Christ on earth? ‘To teach us morality? No; the 
wisest men have always taught virtue. The heart 
of the Gospel is not in the ten commandments, or in 
a list of duties. This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on him whom he hath sent. The significance 
of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus 
is that he is the unique revelation of the love of God. 

We acquire the threefold conception of God 
through nature, the human mind and the story of 
Jesus. This story, as told in the Gospels with 
matchless literary art, is as clear as air and simple 
enough for the understanding of a child. If it were 
not for the story of Christ, I should never go to 


150 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


church, I should never worship, I should never pray. 
So far from the incarnation being negligible in re- 
ligion, it is for me the only true religion. He is 
the only voice from heaven that seems to me authen- 
tic, He is the only light that pierces the darkness. 

Suppose we could obtain a sufficiently clear no- 
tion of the goodness of God through nature and his- 
tory—then the New Testament would immediately 
become superfluous. The Gospel would not only be 
no good news, it would not even be news. What is 
the use of solemnly telling me something I already 
know? I heard a Catholic priest say on Easter Day 
that if Jesus were not divine, the Catholic Church 
would be the greatest enigma in history. So it 
would; so would any church. It would be much ado 
about nothing. 

It is important to remember that whether you 
believe in Christ or not, the story of his appearance 
is not superfluous. No news was ever needed more 
than that. It supplies precisely and fully informa- 
tion nowhere else discoverable—information essen- 
tial to the peace, hope, and happiness of mankind. 
It makes every individual human life significant 
and precious. 

What is the best argument against the truth of 
the Christian religion? 

Unbelievers may be divided into two classes, the 
materialists and the sceptics; neither of them have 
ever injured Christianity. 


TRIANGLE I5t 


Here is a foolish question, which I often hear. 
How can you believe in the Christian religion, when 
so many men, who are certainly as clever as you are, 
do not believe in it? You might just as well ask a 
citizen, How can you vote the Democratic ticket, 
when so many men, equally wise and patriotic, vote 
Republican? Faith is a matter of individual choice, 
which one must be ready rationally to defend, but 
which opposition does not destroy. 

Browning compares faith to a pearl. I take my 
pearl, and show it proudly to some one who says, 
“Yes, but you can’t eat pearls. I prefer potatoes.” 
There have always been people who prefer potatoes 
to pearls. Esau was the father of all materialists, 
because the poor fellow was so hungry. ‘The streets 
are filled with men who say, “I am going this way 
only once, and I shall be a long time dead. I mean 
to enjoy life while it lasts.” ‘These men are often 
called shrewd, clever, hard-headed. Show them 
something materially good, like a dinner or a raise 
in salary, and they are acutely interested. Talk to 
them about music, art, religion—you might as well 
talk to a piece of cheese. It is not surprising that 
they do not believe in the Christian religion; the 
surprising thing is that a great shock or a terrible 
anguish or the loss of some one they love, may 
bring them into belief. Then they see that material 
things are of no support. The fact that the world 
is full of worldly-minded people is no argument 
against religion. It is what ought to be expected. 


152 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


But there is another and a nobler class of unbe- 
lievers. ‘These do not prefer potatoes to pearls— 
they do not believe that what you have found is a 
pearl. You bring them your pearl; they laugh pity- 
ingly and say, ‘“‘Why, my friend, that isn’t a pearl 
at all. It is pretty, but it isn’t genuine.”’ While 
granting the beauty of the Gospel story, they do not 
believe it is true. There have always been people 
like that, many of them with wise and prudent 
minds. In every one of the twenty centuries of 
Christianity, there have been a considerable number 
of cultivated individuals who have done their best 
to destroy it. ‘They have used all their intellectual 
powers, all their scientific education, all their will 
and energy, to kill Christian faith. Really it is 
amusing to think how little they have accomplished. 
After twenty centuries Christianity is stronger than 
ever. The harder they hit it, the more robust it 
becomes. 

The materialists and the sceptics have inflicted 
no serious injury on Christianity. My opinion is 
that they have helped it. Enemies strengthen a 
good cause. 

But there is one argument against Christianity, 
there is one class of people, that must be reckoned 
with. ‘They have hurt the Christian Church in the 
past, they are hurting it now. 

They are those who insist they have found the 
pearl, that it is genuine, that it is to be prized above 
everything else in the world—and then they show by 


TRIANGLE 153 


their actions that they prefer potatoes. These are 
not frank and honest enemies, these are traitors. 

Although Christian faith cannot be proved like 
geometry, it can in one aspect be tested. Christianity 
is a plan of action, a way of life, in which supreme 
emphasis is laid on certain things. Christianity 
definitely promises to accomplish certain benefits 
for those who accept it. If you do what I say, said 
our Lord, you will be better, you will be more char- 
itable, you will be happier. Now if we see pro- 
fessed Christians, prominent church-members whose 
lives how no difference from the lives of those 
who have no religion, this is not merely a ridiculous 
spectacle. It is terrible, it is frightful, it is tragic. 
Why? 

Who is the most formidable enemy of a physi- 
cian? Is it another doctor who happens to be a 
competitor? No. It is a patient who goes around 
saying, “I took the medicine that doctor gave me, 
and it made me worse.”’ For, in this individual in- 
stance, that doctor has been proved a failure. If 
the majority of his patients were of the same opin- 
ion, the doctor would have to leave town. 

Now if Christianity professes to be able to make 
men and women better, every church-member who 
is not made better is a serious argument against the 
truth of Christianity. All professed Christians who 
exhibit in their lives selfishness, cheating, hardness 
of heart, meanness, jealousy, envy, hatred, are terri- 
ble indictments against the Christian religion. They 


154 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


are doing their utmost to destroy it. Every one 
of them might as well walk the streets with a 
placard on breast and back, proclaiming in large 
letters 


CHRISTIANITY IS A FAILURE 


For in their instances, it is a failure—a proved 
failure. 

If I thought that Christians were no better than 
non-Christians, I should suffer from depression. 
But it is not so. ‘Taking Christians as a class, they 
are so much better than unbelievers, that on those 
rare occasions when a church-member is caught in 
crime, it makes front-page news. 

In a certain sense, we are all hypocrites. No man 
or woman can live up to the Christian ideals. If 
we could, they would not be ideals. But most 
church-members are on the level. They mean well; 
most of them are happier and better than they 
would be without faith. But every professed Chris- 
tian should remember, whenever he indulges in 
meanness, selfishness, jealousy, and other sins, he 
is striking a terrible blow at his religion—he is an 
efficient argument against it. 

Consider the opposite side of the question. If 
all church-members in the world began now to live 
according to their faith, they would not only im- 
prove, they would revolutionise human society. 
Such is the power of the Christian religion, when- 
ever its force is applied. 


TRIANGLE 1S6 


After the old Pope in Browning’s poem has ex- 
amined his belief to its foundations, he speaks nine 
words that no Feeble-faith should ever forget. 


I must outlive a thing ere know it dead. 


How do I know whether a thing is dead? I know 
it dead only if I have outlived it. I go into the 
woods with dog and gun. A partridge rises; I 
shoot; he falls. JI take him home, I have him 
cooked, I eat him. He is dead. I am a poor miser- 
able human creature who may tomorrow be killed 
in the street by a motorcar; but anyhow, I have 
lived longer than that partridge. Every year some- 
one says that Christianity is dead. Is it? In the 
eighteenth century, many writers said it was dead, 
and one of them thought he had killed it. 

When I was a student at Yale, we read the work 
of a German philosopher—Philosophy of the Un- 
conscious by Eduard von Hartmann. On the second 
page of his interesting book, he said, ‘‘Christianity 
is already dead, having passed through all its 
phases.”’ About twenty years ago, I tried to find 
out, just for curiosity’s sake, whether or not Hart- 
mann was dead. Of course the man in the street 
knew nothing about it; I asked three or four profes- 
sors of philosophy. Every one of them made the 
same answer. ‘‘Well now, I don’t know whether 
Hartmann is dead or not.”” How my readers feel 
about this matter I cannot say; but for my part, I 
had rather be dead than not have any one know 


156 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


whether or not I was dead. I can conceive of no 
more complete oblivion than that. Hartmann said 
in 1869 that Christianity was dead; in 1905 the ex- 
_ perts in his own subject could not remember whether 
he was dead or alive. 

Is Christianity dead? It has serious faults in its 
organisations, but you cannot travel anywhere with- 
out seeing churches. No, it is not dead. ‘The prob- 
ability is that every one of its living foes will die 
before Christianity is extinct. 

In a certain town in Europe about fifteen years 
ago, a university professor declared in a lecture that 
Jesus was a myth. On the following Sunday thirty 
thousand people assembled in a square in that town, 
and they sang together 4 Mighty Fortress Is Our 
God! Christianity is not dead; not yet. 

Well, then, is anything wrong with the church? 
Shall we be complacent, self-satisfied ? 

Oh, there are many things wrong with the church, 
there are many things wrong with every one of us. 
What in particular is the matter with the church? 
What does it need? It needs purification. It needs 
a tonic. The camp-followers have come to the 
front. : 

In the early days of Christianity, there were not 
many Christians, but every one of them was one 
hundred percent. here were no hypocrites. Why? 
Because it was dangerous to be a Christian. If a 
man said, I am a Christian, he was crucified, or 
burned or tortured in some equally horrible manner. 


TRIANGLE 157 


Did the killing of Christians kill Christianity? 
Quite otherwise. When one Christian died, two 
grew in his place. They clamoured for punishment, 
they competed for the prize of torture. One man 
shouted, ‘‘Don’t forget me—I’m a Christian too!” 
But before they could get the fire started under him, 
others, men, women, and children, singing, laugh- 
ing, cheering, also wished to be counted. ‘‘Don’t 
overlook us! we are all Christians!” 

In those times if one said he was a Christian, 
his neighbours handed him over to the police. But 
today if any one said he was a Christian, his neigh- 
bours would say, What of it? It used to mean some- 
thing, something definite, to be a Christian. It 
drew the attention of the authorities, and the at- 
tention of the public. 

Suppose today I should address an audience and 
say, ‘‘I wish every one in this room who is a Chris- 
tian to stand up. But before you do this, it is only 
fair to tell you that this afternoon you will be 
burned alive.’”’ How many would get up? Nobody 
knows what he will do till the emergency comes. 
But what I do know is that every one who got up 
would be a Christian. 

Today, so far from being dangerous or unpopular 
to be a Christian, it is a positive asset, a social ad- 
vantage. So true is this, that any candidate for the 
Presidency of the United States, who should an- 
nounce during the course of the campaign that he 
did not believe in the Christian religion, could not 


158 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


be elected. I do not mean to accuse any candidate 
for public office of hypocrisy. But you will observe 
that the candidates attend divine service every Sun: 
day, no matter how tired they may be. 

All this is good, because it shows how strong 
Christianity is. But in its strength is the element of 
weakness. 

Centuries after it ceased to be dangerous to be a 
Christian, it became dangerous to be anything else. 
Yet in prosperity the Christian church suffered from 
corruption. Finally, in the eighteenth century, in- 
stead of the church being attacked from without by 
torture and murder, the foe came from within—the 
increase of scepticism. The eighteenth century was 
more sceptical than the twentieth. The climax was 
reached in the French Revolution, when the Revolu- 
tionists abolished Christianity by law. The new 
Government said it was ridiculous to date history 
after the birth of Jesus, a person of no importance. 
The French Revolution was far more significant 
than Anno Domini. Therefore they changed the 
calendar, and I have at this moment in my house 
several books published in Paris in the last decade 
of the eighteenth century, which have the year of 
the French Revolution on the title-page instead of 
the year of Our Lord. But this governmental 
atheism injured Christianity no more than the old 
governmental persecution. Christianity thrives on 
open hostility. So today, when the Soviet govern- 
ment in Russia has abolished the Christian religion 


TRIANGLE 159 


in schools and the mention of it in books, Christian- 
ity is not hurt. Quite the contrary. 

In order that the Christian Church may shake of 
its torpor and rise to its possibilities as a living force, 
it may be necessary in the immediate future for 
Christianity once more to become unpopular, as it 
was in the early days of persecution, as it was in the 
eighteenth century in France, as it is now in Russia. 
The average man shows love for his country by his 
willingness to make any sacrifice for it, even to the 
extent of yielding up his life. If religion is to be the 
vital force it ought to be, it must come first and not 
second in the life of every believer. If religion can- 
not come first, it need not come at all. 

During the Great War, rightly or wrongly (I am 
merely chronicling a fact), the religion of Christ 
played second fiddle to the religion of nationalism. 
At the call to arms, Roman Catholics from America 
gladly butchered Roman Catholics from Austria; 
Protestants from Germany gladly killed Protestants 
from England. The vast majority of Christians put 
their country first, and their religion second. Yet 
if Christian believers all over the world should unite, 
war could be abolished today. 

Will conditions continue as they are? Christians 
should always be good citizens—granted; but will 
they always render to Cesar some things that belong 
to God? 

Without attempting to tell any man what he 
should do, it is my belief that in the future Christian- 


160 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


ity 1s once more to be tested. Instead of church- 
membership being a comfortable social asset, it is 
going to cost, cost horribly. When we see church- 
members giving money until it hurts, when we see 
them prouder of their church-membership than of 
belonging to any social club, when we see mothers 
prouder of having a son in the foreign missionary 
field than of having him at the battle front, then we 
shall see big things. Then the church will suffer 
from persecution and grow strong; then we shall see 
thousands leaving the church as rats leave a sinking 
ship; they will leave it because they are rats. Only 
the ship will not sink. Perhaps it was sinking be- 
cause it carried too many rats. Once rid of them, 
the ship will outride the storm. 


' 


x 
JUDGMENT 


Wandering around the picture-galleries of Eu- 
rope, one’s attention is arrested every now and then 
by a painting of the Last Judgment. In most of the 
representations of this scene, horror triumphs over 
rapture. It was believed that comparatively only 
few were saved, hence the population of hell vastly 
exceeded that of heaven; and it was easier to exite 
interest by terror than by beauty. Whatever a 
scholar may think of the relative merits of the three 
parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy, it is certain that 
Hell in the poem is more interesting than either 
Purgatory or Paradise, and that the depiction of 
torment made a sharper and deeper impression on 
the minds of readers (then and now) than any show 
of bliss. The greatest of medieval hymns is the 
Dies Irae: 


Day of wrath, that dreadful day. 


In view of the then generally accepted belief that 
the majority of human beings were travelling toward 
eternal physical torture, and that their imagination 
of that unspeakable place was daily quickened by 


realistic paintings, solemn hymns, and eloquent ser- Aa 
161 


162 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


mons, why did not Everyman do his best to avoid 
such punishment? One not versed in the stupidity 
and inconsistency of human nature would believe 
that in medieval society there would have been no 
sinners, that men and women would have endeav- 
oured to live in holiness. Alas, it was not so at all. 
If the breaking of the moral law were as audible as 
the breaking of a stick, the air would have been filled 
with the sound of the fracture of the Ten Com- 
mandments. With the admonitions of hell directly 
before them, there was plenty of cheating, lying, 
stealing, and profligacy. 

Perhaps the reason that conduct and belief failed 
to harmonise was that the pleasures of sin were im- 
mediate and tangible, while the Day of Judgment 
seemed remote. 

The majority of human beings lack the kind of 
wisdom expressed in the word Foresight. The lack 
of foresight indicates not only a deficiency in wis- 
dom, but a deficiency in imagination. The future is 
certain, yes, but in contrast to the present it seems 
vague and shadowy. he man who borrows money 
receives cash on the nail; and in return he gives a 
piece of paper that cannot hurt him for a long time, 
and anyhow, a lot of things may happen before then. 
How many people who drive automobiles have paid 
for them? The salesman beguiles them by an “‘at- 
tractive proposition’; you pay only a little right 
down, and the rest in ‘‘easy payments” at comfort- 


JUDGMENT 163 


able intervals. Such a temptation is too much for 
the average man. 

In the third chapter of the First Letter to the 
Corinthians, Paul attempts to persuade his readers 
into paths of rectitude by insisting that there will 
be a Judgment Day. 


For other foundation can no man lay than that is Iaid, 


which is Jesus Christ. 

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, pre- 
cious stones, wood, hay, stubble; 

Every man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall 
declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall 
try every man’s work of what sort it is. 


The day shall declare it—Paul has in mind a 
special Judgment Day, when the accounts shall be 
opened, and all of us rewarded or condemned ac- 
cording to the value of our work on earth. Then 
shall all our deeds be submitted to the test by fire, 
and only things of permanent worth can survive. 

Paul had in mind a special Judgment Day, but as 
a matter of fact most of us do not have to wait for 
that. ‘There are in our earthly lives many days of 
judgment, many times when we are tested. If the 
result of this test is unsatisfactory, the victim often 
loudly complains that it is unfair, he did not know it 
was coming just then, he really is much better than 
this test has indicated, he wants another chance, 
sine, opek 

If one enters into a game, one must play the game 


164 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


according to the rules. The game of life is the 
greatest game of all, and its rules may be ascer- 
tained. They are more clearly and definitely set 
forth in the Bible than anywhere else; and those who 
break them usually end by being broken. 

Everything in national, political, social, and indi- 
vidual history tends toward a crisis, toward a test. 

Lazy, idle, selfish and silly people hate tests, and 
with good reason. The test shows them up. There 
are many boys and girls at school who hate exam- 
inations, and many of their elders who wish to make 
education ‘‘easy” and attractive say that examina- 
tions should be abolished. I have been a profes- 
sional teacher for thirty-six years, and while I recog- 
nise that there are imperfections in every system 
of examinations, I believe in them, because I can 
think of no better way to make a definite test at a 
definite time. 

I believe in examinations not because I hate boys, 
but because I love them, and am anxious that they 
should not go out from school into the world un- 
tested. Furthermore, just as a fighting man rejoices 
in the day of battle, just as a man training for a race 
rejoices when the race comes, so I think those who 
have been honestly and industriously pursuing a 
course of study ought to feel something of the fight- 
er’s joy as they enter the room where the examina- 
tion takes place. You have been enjoying the 
pleasures of school life, the association of friends, 
many interesting contacts, but here nothing can help 


JUDGMENT 165 


you. You stand on your own feet—how much do 
you know? 

Remember the surplus, for in your day of judg- 
ment you will need it. Healthy growth always pro- 
vides more than is necessary for the ordinary day’s 
work. If one goes to bed every night for months 
completely exhausted, something is wrong. Either 
one is attempting a task beyond one’s powers, or one 
is in such bad health that one is not fit to work. It 
is surprising how many of the parables of Jesus deal 
with the surplus. 

When people shout today the word preparedness, 
they are thinking of guns, but Jesus was thinking 
and talking about moral and spiritual preparedness. 


Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, 
which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bride- 
groom. 

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. (4n 
unusually high percentage of wise ones.) 

They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with 
them. 

But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 

While the bridegrom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. 
(Manifestly a good thing to do, in order to be refreshed. And 
as sleeping requires little exertion and forethought, the foolish 
in this respect successfully imitated the wise.) 

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bride- 
groom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins 
arose, and trimmed their lamps. 

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for 
our lamps are gone out. (The lamps of the wise had either 


166 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


been extinguished when they lay down fo sleep, or they had now 
begun to use their extra oil.) 

But the wise answered,, saying, Not so; lest there be not 
enough for us and you; but go ye rather to them that sell, and 


buy for yourselves. 
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they 
that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the 


door was shut. (J can hear it.) 

Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, 
open to us. (Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the 
things which I say?) 

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know 
you not. (J don’t know you! no denunciation can be so anni- 


hilating as that.) 
Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour 


wherein the Son of man cometh. 


Many enemies of the church today delight to 
quote Jesus’s denunciations of the Scribes, Pharisees, 
hypocrites, and apply them to church-members. But 
however wholesome this may be, we should remem- 
ber that Jesus denounced not merely the leaders of 
the Jewish church, but the common run of humanity. 
Only a few of the parables are comforting; most of 
them are cruel. ‘That is, they are cruel as life is 
cruel. Nothing is more cruel to a fool than experi- 
ence. Nothing more cruel to a liar than the truth. 

The significance of many of the parables lies in 
the surplus; in the complete preparation not for 
ordinary things, but for crises; not for fair weather, 
but for storms. 

Observe that the foolish virgins took their lamps, 


JUDGMENT 167 


and apparently had them trimmed and burning; so 
that as the procession of ten girls moved along, it 
was impossible to distinguish the foolish from the 
wise. Sometimes the foolish look very wise: there 
is no solemnity like that of drunkenness. The dif- 
ference between wisdom and folly in this instance 
was that the wise were prepared for an emergency; 
they carried extra oil. Had the Bridegroom ap- 
peared at an early hour, all would have been ad. 
mitted. But it just happened (just my luck!) that 
the Bridegroom was late. That fact made all the 
difference; it showed up the ten women; it was a test. 

The audiences that gathered to hear the preaching 
of Jesus resembled modern audiences. They were 
all alike in the capacity to hear; for God has given 
just as good hearing to idiots as to sensible men. 
The thing that separated the audience into two 
groups was the capacity to profit by instruction. 
Those who heard and did were likewise builders 
who built houses on rock foundations; those who 
heard and did not were like builders who placed 
houses on the sand. Let us suppose that the houses 
were equally good, though I doubt it. So long as 
there was gentle weather, all the houses seemed 
secure; but when the floods came, the house on the 
sand fell down; and great was the fall of it. 

Why did Jesus add that last phrase? Because 
every irremediable calamity is impressive. It re- 
sounds and reverberates throughout the community. 

Every wise and honest builder builds not for ordi- 


168 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


nary, but for extraordinary occasions. What would 
be thought of an engineer who should build a bridge 
just strong enough to sustain the average day’s 
trafic? 

A professional prize-fighter, training for a con- 
test, has one advantage over you and me. He 
knows the date of~his judgment day. He knows 
the day and the hour when his resources of skill 
and strength will be put to the test; and even those 
who display little intelligence in other things have 
sense enough to prepare conscientiously for a fight. 
After the fight, we hear without condemnation the 
phrase, “He breaks training.” How is it with us in 
the competition of life? In order to succeed or even 
to acquit ourselves respectably, all our education and 
energy will be needed—and what is most difficult, 
we do not know on what particular day we shall 
be tested. What is the conclusion? The conclusion 
is that we must be in training all the time. 

Let us listen to the wise man, Emerson, on the 
theme 


TODAY 


Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the 
year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows 
that every day is doomsday. ‘Today is a king in disguise. 
‘Today always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an 
uniform experience that all good and great and happy actions 
are made up precisely of these blank todays. Let us not be 
deceived. Let us unmask the king as he passes. 


JUDGMENT 169 


A book that had a wide circulation fifty years ago 
was written by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, and 
was called “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World.” (He ended with Gettysburg, but if he 
were alive today he would have to add the Battle 
of the Marne.) These were decisive battles be- 
cause they settled certain things; their consequences 
were lasting and important. The heroes of these 
conflicts, although they made or added to their repu- 
tation in them, did not make their character there. 
That had been made in obscurity. We often say of 
some decisive event where one man stands out in a 
strong light, ““That event was the making of that 
man.” But it is not true; the event did not make the 
man; it revealed him. Why is it that whenever we 
think of the Presidents of the United States—and 
on the whole America has been fortunate—two, and 
only two, stand in a class by themselves? It is be- 
cause Washington and Lincoln never put themselves 
forward, never loved themselves more than they 
loved their country; it is because they were of that 
extremely rare class of men who were never intoxi- 
cated by power, for the more power they received, 
the more disinterested they became; it is because 
their characters were equal to their talents; but 
above all it is because the severest scrutiny of their 
lives, from birth to high office, fails to disclose any- 
thing unworthy. They were not plaster saints, they 
were not marble statues, they were men, with the 
faults, limitations, and general streakiness charac- 


170 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


teristic of human nature. But when the great crises 
came, these two men were equal to the situation, be- 
cause they had been in training all their lives. In 
the years of obscurity, they were growing strong, 
and not weak; ripe, and not rotten. 

Whenever today any man or combination of men 
seeks an individual for an important post, the 
seekers ask of those who know, Is he up to it? and 
the answer can be found in only one place—his past 
life. 

Goethe compares life to a game of whist, where 
the cards are dealt out by an unseen dealer, and 
where it is left to us not to complain of a bad hand, 
but to do the best we can with what cards we have. 
When Professor Sumner wrote his Life of Andrew 
Jackson, he divested Old Hickory of all the glamour 
of sentimentalism, and placed on the title-page 
“Andrew Jackson as a Public Man. What he was, 
what chances he had, and what he did with them.” 
He had no early advantages like Washington, 
granted; but what did he do with those he had? 
And on him the biographer turned the merciless 
microscopic light of historical research. 

A. E. Housman has among his incomparable 
lyrics the soliloquy of a man about to be hanged. 
He curses his fate and the day he was born. But if 
we could look back over all the so-called minor 
events of his life, including his thoughts, we should 
probably find that his melodramatic departure from 
the world was a natural end to a logical chain. 


JUDGMENT 171 


The murder for which he was hanged may have 
been done in a moment of passion; but he had 
yielded to passion so many times in so many seem- 
ingly unimportant things, that at the crisis his pas- 
sion had become ungovernable. 

An American play that produced a tremendous 
effect was called The Easiest Way, and although the 
final fate of the heroine seemed so tragic that the 
audience nearly shouted in protest, every spectator 
upon reflexion was forced to conclude that it was 
inevitable. She had always taken the easiest way; 
and the easiest way had led to the hardest fate. 

Many men at the tragic conclusion of a certain 
course of action, feel that if they could only begin 
life over again, they would be and act otherwise. 
Probably not. We should repeat the same faults. 
J. M. Barrie, in his play Dear Brutus, the title taken 
from Shakespeare’s 


The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings, 


has undertaken to show that out of a large company 
who actually have the chance to live their life over 
again, only one shows any improvement. Perhaps 
that is the reason so few would be willing to relive 
their lives; why should I be a fool over again? 

I have not studied science sufficiently to express 
an opinion on organic evolution. But there is this 
truth in evolution—life is a development from what 
is, to what will be. The future is in the present. 


172 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


It is impossible to detach or isolate any event either 
in the life of a nation or in that of an individual. 
One cannot explain the Russian Revolution or the 
Soviet State by studying only present conditions, 
still less by saying that Russians are madmen. How- 
ever dreadful and tyrannical present conditions may 
be, the only way to understand them is to go back 
patiently in history and find out what were the ante- 
cedents. Every time the old Imperial Régime acted 
despotically and irresponsibly, it was preparing the 
Revolution. If you wish to understand the Reign of 
Terror in France, look at the history of France 
under Louis XIV and XV, 

As I regard my college classmates at reunions, I 
cannot help reflecting how little our personalities 
have changed. We have all grown older, most of 
us have developed, but in only a very few instances 
is there a different kind of man. 

Thus there are really no unimportant events; 
every little thing we do and think forms our charac- 
ter and our destiny. Is insistence on the rarity of 
change a counsel of despair? By no means; even if 
it were, that would not alter the facts. What we 
want is the truth, and even if we do not want it, we 
need it. The truth is that only a few men, after long 
ease and indulgence, succeed in reconstructing their 
character; but only a few men really succeed in 
anything. 

It is depressing to see people take such pains with 
trivial matters, to be so anxious about unimportant 


JUDGMENT 173 


things, and take so little pains with their lives. The 
art of life is a difficult art to master, because there 
are so many details, so much routine, and routine 
cannot be made interesting unless it has a purpose, 
and the purpose kept in mind. It is easier to die 
bravely than to live bravely. The average man 
has so much vanity that he is usually fairly equal to 
a spectacular situation, where he can dramatise 
himself. 

Heifetz plays the violin. Those who listen would 
be very glad to play so well as he, but even if they 
practised all their lives, they could not equal him; 
why not? Because he happens to be a genius. But 
even if his hearers could be assured of eventual equal 
proficiency, how many would be sufficiently perse- 
vering to pay the price he has paid? How many 
would be willing to give up their childhood, their 
youth, tennis, golf, college education, social pleas- 
ures, all the delights that make every day a varied 
round of agreeable events? Although Heifetz is 
a genius, his success is no accident. It resulted from 
daily, weekly, monthly, yearly devotion to a violin, 
practising alone, with no audience and no applause. 
Now the toil, then the victory. But toil comes first. 
And the chief reason that so few are victors is that 
most cannot endure the necessary uninteresting pre- 
paratory toil. 

But during those long years of dull practice, 
Heifetz saw the future in the present; he saw the 
day when the concert-halls of Europe and America 


174 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


would not be large enough to hold him. Hence 
drudgery was illumined by a vision. 

Once in a long while one meets an American who 
can speak a foreign language fluently. Others look 
on with envy. But if they wish to approach his 
proficiency, there lies the dusty way through gram- 
mar, phrase-book, dictation, irregular verbs, and all 
the other unexciting and depressing details. Very 
few have the daily courage necessary to endure this 
toil. Even those Americans who go abroad to learn 
a foreign language, and stay there for years, do they 
succeed? Only afew. The majority return without 
the guerdon. Why? Because, instead of learning 
to speak French and German, they have been teach- 
ing their foreign acquaintances English. It was the 
easiest way, and they took it. 

The successful University crew has only one day 
of excitement in the year: the day of the final race. 
In order to row well on that occasion, they have 
spent months of hard, uninteresting toil, before only 
one witness, who is chary of praise and fluent in cor- 
rection. But ambition and the desire for victory 
have kept up their spirits during the tedious months 
of preparation. Eight months of hard work for 
twenty minutes of glory. 

You see, in order to be successful in any under- 
taking, one must connect the present with the future, 
realise the meaning of the two words cause and 
effect. Percy Grainger was born in Australia; his 
mother took care of him every moment during his 


JUDGMENT mac 


babyhood, and when he was still a child, took him on 
the long voyage to Germany, supervised his educa- 
tion and practice, and went through obscure years 
of unremitting watchfulness. One night, in a 
crowded music hall, I sat in the audience with her; 
Percy Grainger had just finished playing a concerto, 
and he was bowing for the fifth or sixth recall. I 
turned to her, and said, “This is your reward, and 
you saw it coming.” 

To return for a moment to the opening paragraph 
of this sermon—the reason men’s fear of hell was 
not sufficient to deter them from vice, was because 
the day of judgment seemed remote. Most indi- 
viduals do not connect cause and effect. Why is it 
that in universities so many students loaf during 
their undergraduate days and work hard only in 
the professional schools? Because in the latter they 
see the connexion between work and wages, and in 
the former they do not. If they only knew! Now 
some do know; and they are those we hear of in 
later years. 

In daily living, we must glorify the details, or they 
will be too much for us. How far will devotion 
carry aman? Millions of average men will follow 
the flag of their country into the valley of the 
shadow of death, cheering as they advance; thou- 
sands of men enthusiastically died for a cold- 
hearted, selfish man, Napoleon; millions have given 
their lives for all sorts of things, worthy and 
unworthy. 


176 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


In view of such facts, I would suggest that the 
best way to make every day interesting is personal 
devotion to Jesus Christ. We have a leader who 
not only overcame the world, but even death and the 
grave. Let us borrow from the soldier, courage; 
from the. statesman, ambition; from the artist, 
patience; from the millionaire, perseverance; let us 
turn these qualities into service. A good character 
cannot be attained without the daily employment 
of all these elements. The reward is in the service; 
humdrum life becomes interesting; details are 
brightened; routine has a purpose. 

Milton could not write his epic until he made the 
discovery that although God did not need him, he 
did need to work for God. ‘There is neither great 
nor small; those who endure patiently and cheerfully 
may be accomplishing more than those who are 
famous. 


God doth not need 
Either man’s work, or his own gifts; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. 


About three hundred years ago, George Herbert, 
who had given up political ambition to serve God 
in a tiny village, expressed the art of daily living 
in a poem that will never be forgotten: 


Teach me, my God and King, 
In all things thee to see, 

And what I do in any thing, 
To do it as for thee.... 


JUDGMENT 177 


All may of thee partake: 

Nothing can be so mean, 

Which with his tincture (for thy sake) 
Will not grow bright and clean. 


A servant with this clause 

Makes drudgery divine: 

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 
Makes that and the action fine. 


‘This is the famous stone 

That turneth all to gold; 

For that which God doth touch and own 
Cannot for less be told. 


XI 
ETIQUETTE 


The best of men 
That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer, 
A soft, meek, patient, humble tranquil spirit, 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed. 
—Thomas Dekker. 


Many years ago, when I was at Northfield, 
Massachusetts, I went out before breakfast to look 
at the mountains. I was thrilled by the glory of the 
summer morning, and when I came in to take my 
place at table, I turned to an old man sitting near 
to me, and exclaimed, ‘Have you been out this 
morning? It is a glorious spectacle! The mists are 
rolling off the tops of the mountains.” To my 
astonishment he pulled a long face and said with 
sincere but nevertheless intolerable unction, ‘Yes, 
and I trust the mists will roll from many a sinsick 
soul today.” Instead of being impressed, I was dis- 
gusted. The beauty which had filled my mind was 
somehow defiled. If the speaker had not been ven- 
erable, I should have told him exactly what I 
thought of him. 


When I was a student at college, a stranger en- 
178 


ETIQUETTE 179 


tered my room one day and asked me if I were 
interested in the religious work of the Y. M. C. A. 
I told him I was deeply interested. ‘“Then,” said 
he, ‘“‘may we not have a season of prayer together ?”’ 
Well, I never refuse to pray with any one, for any 
one, or to be prayed for; so we got down on our 
knees, and had a season of prayer. But I was un- 
comfortable, and after the stranger had left, I felt 
as though I needed a bath. 

Shortly after this unpleasant experience, my 
roommate and I were calling one evening on two 
sisters. We four young people were chattering, 
laughing, and talking harmless nonsense, appropri- 
ate to our years. Suddenly the girls’ mother rushed 
into the room and sternly said, ‘“‘This frivolous con- 
versation has gone on long enough! Let us read the 
Bible together.’”’ Accordingly five Bibles were 
brought in, and we all read aloud in turn, two verses 
at a time. No one seemed cheerful, and I could 
judge of the embarrassment of the girls by my own 
sensations. Suddenly—everything was sudden with 
her—the mother turned to my roommate and asked, 
“Are you a Christian?’ He instantly and emphat- 
ically answered “No!” Then the lady, after having 
somewhat recovered from her surprise at the un- 
qualified negative, glared at me and said, “It is a 
great responsibility to room with the unsaved.” 

Now the old man who moralised on the moun- 
tains, the pious stranger who wanted a season of 
prayer, and the severe mother who brought in the 


180 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Bible, were all, in a sense, right. It is more im- 
portant that the mists of sin should leave the heart 
than that the clouds should leave the mountains; 
it is more important to pray than to sit in idle medi- 
tation; the language of the Bible is better than the 
brittle conversation of youth. But— 

If my own Christian faith had not been strong, 
it might have been injured by these attempts to im- 
prove it. I could well understand how such ad- 
dresses might drive the unregenerate to alcohol or 
profanity. But I had sense enough to know that 
religion was finer than these crude representations 
of it. I do not despise Beethoven because of jazz, 
nor do I withhold respect from physicians because 
there are quacks. 

Why, I had myself gone to Northfield purely for 
religious purposes. I went there to hear the two 
men—now with God—whose speeches helped me 
more than any sermons I have ever heard. ‘These 
two men—apart from their Christian faith—were 
as unlike as two men could possibly be. One was 
rather short and almost incredibly fat. ‘The other 
was tall and thin to emaciation. One had never 
known the advantages of learning, and often used 
bad grammar. The other had received a long and 
expensive University training, had travelled all over 
the world, and written scholarly books. One had 
been a salesman (I am sure a successful one), and 
had become an evangelist. The other was a pro- 


ETIQUETTE 181 


fessor of geology. The two men were Dwight L. 
Moody and Henry Drummond. 

Both of them were filled with the spirit of Jesus 
Christ and with the desire to impart it to others. 
But both also had a profound knowledge of human 
nature, and a worldly tact that would have done 
credit to King Edward VII. In other words, they 
were wise as serpents and harmless as doves. 

Nothing is more important than for a sinner to 
become a Christian, nothing; but it is a mistake to 
stop a man who is running to catch a train and ask 
him about his salvation. He is likely to miss both. 

Extreme earnestness and good manners seldom 
go together; the fact is unfortunate but nevertheless 
a fact. The reason is not far to seek. If a man is 
possessed by an idea or a conviction, its communica- 
tion to others seems at the moment so primarily 
important that the method of presentation, consid- 
eration of the time and the place, and proper regard 
for the convenience of the listener, are alike for- 
gotten. You might urge that in comparison with the 
seriousness of the message, the method of its trans- 
mission is of little consequence. But if the object of 
the speaker be something more than merely to re- 
lieve his own mind, if he wishes to persuade his 
listener, then effectiveness of manner demands 
attention. 

When Jeremy Collier attacked the theatres of the 
Restoration, which deserved it as fully as many of 
our own, he attacked them with such savage bru- 


182 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


tality that John Dryden, who manfully admitted his 
own sins, nevertheless replied, “I will not say, ‘The 
zeal of God’s house has eaten him up’; but I am sure 
it has devoured some part of his good manners and 
civility.” 

Paul said, “Evil communications corrupt good 
manners,” which is true; but they are also cor- 
rupted by excess of zeal, or by a talent for the 
inopportune. 

It is a pity that tolerance without conviction 
should often be more attractive superficially than 
conviction without tolerance. Cosmopolitan men of 
the world who are without faith either in politics or 
in religion, are often more polite and superficially 
agreeable than political Radicals and Christian 
Evangelicals. 

Intense earnestness is likely to be lacking in art. 
A man ardently in love with a woman cannot con- 
verse with her so entertainingly as one who is fancy 
free. Perhaps the women are wise enough to make 
the proper allowances. 

The novelist A. S. M. Hutchinson, who is ab- 
sorbed in spreading the gospel, is not so brilliant a 
literary artist as Anatole France, who was entirely 
without religion and morality, who in fact had no 
principles at all. 

Yet so far from manners being unimportant, they 
are in religion of enormous importance. A hermit’s 
table-manners are of little consequence; but a min- 
ister or a deacon cannot present Christianity effec- 


ETIQUETTE 183 


tively to the unconverted if he emphasises his 
remarks with a toothpick. That extraordinary 
novelist, Anzia Yezierska, who came to America as 
an immigrant, has shown that the chief reason which 
separates the children of immigrants from their 
parents is table-manners. You cannot draw people 
to you if you begin by disgusting them. 

But manners are more than this. Manners should 
be the expression of the mind and heart. Manners 
imply consideration for others—and what is that 
but simply the application of the golden rule? And 
what is the golden rule but the essence of the teach- 
ings of Jesus? I say that conversion to Christianity 
should first of all show itself in improved manners. 
It is tragic that so many church members should be 
rude and even coarse in behaviour, especially in the 
home. 

Especially in the home. Etiquette, like charity, 
and scores of other good things, should begin at 
home. We want no formal politeness between mem- 
bers of the same family; intimacy slays formality, 
as perfect love casts out fear. But kindliness in 
little things, consideration for the feelings of others, 
a good example in self-control and moderation in 
speech, add prodigiously to the happiness of family 
life. Many fathers, who of course love their chil- 
dren, treat the delicate souls of their offspring more 
carelessly than they treat the mechanism of a Ford 
car. Indeed I believe, that if we could look into the 
melancholy history of all divorces, we should find 


184 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


that often it was a lack of masculine etiquette that 
destroyed the love of a wife for her husband. The 
highest happiness on earth, which is found in cheer- 
ful and congenial family life, is lost more often by 
carelessness than by any other cause. And so too is 
the Kingdom of Heaven lost by carelessness. There 
is some truth in the cynical epigram, ‘A gentle- 
man is one who never hurts another’s feelings 
unintentionally.” 

Well, just as religious etiquette should express 
itself in the consideration we show to others in the 
thousand little things that make up life, so it is not 
impertinent or improper to speak of religious eti- 
quette as shown toward God. For I am convinced 
that the distinctions between Christian sects and 
denominations today are largely a matter of re- 
ligious etiquette. 

Just as no church-member should permit an out- 
sider or an unbeliever to be more honest than he is, 
so no church-member should permit, if he can help 
it, a sinner to have more attractive manners than he 
has. ‘he more agreeable, interesting, and attrac- 
tive you can make yourself, the more good you can 
do. It is unfortunate that tolerance should often 
indicate a lack of conviction, but it need not. It is 
unfortunate that people of intense religious convic- 
tions should often be intolerant, but they need not 
be. The art of life is difficult, but we can become 
more proficient than we are now. I am certain that 
it is possible to hold Christian faith tenaciously and 


ETIQUETTE 15 


even fiercely, and yet be tolerant of other points of 
view, and of those who hold them. Is tolerance 
important? 

Paul thought so. Forget the number of times you 
have read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinth- 
ians, forget the sound of the words as they are worn 
by mechanical repetition, and read the chapter again, 
with due attention to every word. ‘The greatest of 
these is Charity.” What did he mean? He meant 
that the greatest thing is sympathy not merely for 
the needs of others, but for their points of view, 
their mental attitudes, their minds, their souls, their 
personalities. To the true Christian, nothing is 
more sacred than the soul of a human being. If we 
cannot elevate it, let us not hurt it or debase it. 


And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it 
profiteth me nothing. 


Charity for another’s mind is greater than pity for 
his needs. Charity for another’s mind means under- 
standing; it means that you are not handing him 
something down from your height, as you throw a 
bone to a hungry dog, it means that you identify 
yourself with him, that you take him on the same 
plane, that you give him back by your own unaf- 
fected sympathy the self-respect he may have lost. 

Many eloquent speakers produce no effect because 
they do not understand their audience; many men 
in conversation produce exactly the opposite effect 


186 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


from what they wish because they are not aware 
of the soul of him to whom they speak. In Hutch- 
inson’s admirable story, If Winter Comes, Mark 
Sabre was the ideal Christian because, without los- 
ing his own convictions, he always understood the 
opposite point of view and any one who held it. 

Casual gifts to the. poor and sincere consideration 
for others are examples respectively of what the 
man in the street means by Charity and what Paul 
meant by it. In John Galsworthy’s play, The 
Pigeon, the vagabond says to his benefactor, ‘‘With- 
out that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched skin of 
orange. . . . But that will not trouble you, Mon- 
sieur; | saw well from the first that you are no 
Christian. You have so kind a face.” There should 
not be anywhere a sufficient basis of fact to make 
this paradox strike home; but there is. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning has always seemed 
to me very near the ideal type of Christian, because 
she held an uncompromising Christian faith, with 
perfect Christian tolerance for other points of view. 
During her engagement to Robert Browning, she 
did what every engaged girl does at some time or 
another—she asked her fiancé what he thought 
about religion. And in order to find out, she told 
him frankly her own views. She said she could 
worship in any church or in any Christian society, 
Catholic or Protestant, ritualistic or evangelical. 
But she said she liked beyond comparison best the 
simplicity of the Dissenters, the unwritten prayer, 


ETIQUETTE 187 


the sacraments administered quietly and without 
charlatanism. Wherever you go, she said shrewdly, 
in all religious societies, you find something to irri- 
tate and a good deal to bear with; but it is not other- 
wise in the world without; and within, you are re- 
minded that God has to be more patient than we 
after all. She added that there was a good deal to 
dissent from among the dissenters; much “bigotry 
and ignorance.” 

For those who like the idea of Authority, and one 
historic church, hallowed by centuries of worship, 
for those who can believe in the Real Presence in 
the Communion, for those who love a beautiful and 
dignified ritual, there is the Catholic Church. The 
fact that there are millions who do love these ele- 
ments and believe in them, is proved by the power 
of the Catholic Church today, by its steady and 
rapid growth, and by the converts of high distinc- 
tion that it draws within its hospitable arms. For 
my part, although I am a Protestant, I rejoice in 
the growth of the Catholic Church—they worship 
the same God, they believe in the same Saviour. 
Instead of there being antagonism between Catholic 
and Protestant, there should be the heartiest good- 
will, the strongest mutual respect and affection. 

Now while there is one Catholic Church, there are 
inevitably scores of Protestant denominations. I 
say “inevitably” because the essence of Protestant- 
ism is individual judgment. In the old days, there 
was hostility between Protestant sects—it is a la- 


188 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


mentable fact that Christian parties hated each 
other more than any of them hated the common foe 
of unbelief. ‘Today things have improved. There 
is unity of feeling among Christians, and the only 
reason for the separation of sects is truly a matter 
of religious etiquette; not a difference in faith, but a 
difference in form of worship. 

In small villages and in the organisation of 
foreign missions, Protestant denominations should 
unite, and show a united front. But in larger cen- 
tres of population, it is really fortunate that we have 
every form of Protestant Christian worship, from 
the dignity of High Church Episcopalianism to the 
Salvation Army. Why? 

So that every Christian can attend some church 
where, as Mrs. Browning said, his sympathies are 
least ruffed and disturbed, where the service elevates 
instead of getting on the nerves. Nothing is perfect, 
not even the superior critic; but in every city, there 
is no excuse for any believer who stays away from 
church. He can always find some place of worship 
that will be helpful. 

Take the single question of the printed or the ex- 
tempore prayer. To one brought up with a prayer- 
book, it seems incongruous and irreverent for a 
minister to stand, facing the congregation and de- 
liver a prayer like a speech. But to one brought 
up without a prayer-book, it seems too formal for 
the most intimate form of communion—that be- 
tween man and God—to be read out of a published 


ETIQUETTE 189 


book. Is it not fortunate, therefore, that those who 
love the printed prayer can attend a church where it 
is used, and those who dislike it can go where it will 
not annoy them? 

There are good Christians who are shocked by 
the language of Billy Sunday and by the methods of 
the Salvation Army. Well, they do not have to 
listen; they can go to a church where no such things 
are heard. But there are others who are saved— 
yes, saved—by Billy Sunday and the Salvation 
Army, whereas if they heard a white-robed boy choir 
and a priest in vestments, they would feel as if they 
were in a theatre. I believe in the variety of Prot- 
estant denominations; and as there are several mil- 
lion forms of sin, I see no reason why there should 
not be at least several hundred forms of worship. 

“God has to be more patient than we after all,” 
said Mrs. Browning. If your refined senses are hurt 
by ignorant preaching, remember the divine pa- 
tience. God must listen and even take it as a 
compliment ! 

Elizabeth Barrett’s letter to her lover showed 
that combiantion of conviction and tolerance which 
should be the hallmark of Christian etiquette. In 
replying to her, Robert Browning said she had 
spoken for both, that she had expressed his own in- 
stincts—instincts confirmed by reason. We observe 
then that both these poets, although Dissenters, had 
the understanding born of sympathy, to worship 
wherever Jesus Christ was held in honour. 


190 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


This correspondence took place in 1846. In 1850 
Browning published his poem, Christmas Eve, in 
which he definitely gave his own religious convic- 
tions. If one read only the first hundred lines of 
this work, one would certainly suppose it to be a 
satire on Christian belief and worship. The congre- 
gation in the small, stuffy, unlovely chapel are dull 
and dirty, stupid in mind, unattractive in appear- 
ance, and the long doctrinal sermon is intolerably 
commonplace. ‘The visitor escapes into the night 
air, which he inhales with joy, and for a moment 
feels that he is nearer to God under the dome of the 
sky than under any church roof. But after a time, 
the approach to God through nature seems vague, 
and he escapes to St. Peter’s in Rome. Here there 
is nothing to shock the esthetic senses, as there was 
in the chapel; everything is gorgeous, grandiose, re- 
splendent. Instead of the desire for beauty being 
starved, as it was in the chapel, it is almost cloyed 
with repletion. He escapes again, and this time 
finds himself in the lecture hall of a German uni- 
versity. Here there is no dogmatic ignorance, as in 
the chapel, and no splendour of superstition, as in 
Rome. It is a purely intellectual environment. 
The professor, a tall thin man—incidentally dying 
of consumption—is lecturing on the myth of Jesus. 
Browning soon escapes from this room, because 
while he found the air in the chapel close and bad, 
in the German lecture room there was no air at all! 

In these four excursions—the dissenting chapel, 


ETIQUETTE IQI 


outdoor nature, the Catholic mass, and the univer- 
sity lecture-room—vwe find the four chief attitudes 
that are taken toward religion. The first is the 
simple, orthodox, evangelical worship, to be found 
today in thousands of Baptist, Methodist, Congre- 
gational, Presbyterian churches; the second is taken 
by those who will accept no creed, join no church, 
but feel a kind of cosmic emotion in communion with 
nature. They say that God reveals Himself to them 
through the stars, rather than through the Bible. 
There is probably more cant talked in nature-wor- 
ship than in any sectarian religion. I have heard 
men say that they can get nearer to God Sunday 
morning on the golf-links, than they can in a stuffy 
church; to which I reply that on the links they cer- 
tainly more often hear His name. 

The third attitude is that taken by ritualists and 
sincere believers in a divinely ordained church, either 
with an inspired Head, or, as in the High Church 
Episcopal denomination, in a genuine apostolic suc- 
cession. The service is beautiful and dignified, com- 
forting and elevating. The fourth attitude is the 
familiar one of agnosticism or scepticism. The New 
Testament story is pretty, only it isn’t true—it never 
happened at all. 

Now the interesting thing is, that Robert Brown- 
ing, after giving in poetic form a fair exposition of 
these four general attitudes, deliberately, positively, 
joyfully chose the first! There may be ignorance 
and stupidity in some small country churches, the 


192 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


people may be lacking in culture and refinement, but 
they believe with all their hearts in the central truth 
of the Christian religion—in the divine, redeeming 
power of the Son of God. ‘The bareness of the 
chapel, the absence of ritual, the poverty of the serv- 
ice, carry at least one advantage. Nothing gets 
between the individual and his God. It would be 
an error to say that the Puritans lacked imagination 
because they worshipped God in a barn. Their 
imagination was so boldly pictorial that they could 
sit in a whitewashed rectangle and clearly see the 
glories of the saints in heaven. 


XII 
SCIENCE 


One evening, as I was walking about in Hyde 
Park, London, and listening to the competitive soap- 
box orators—I call them competitive, for each ora- 
tor knew that the moment he became dull he would 
lose his audience to a rival—I observed some fifty 
yards away an unusually dense crowd. I wriggled 
through this to its core, and there I found two men 
engaged in heated debate. They were debating the 
question of Christian faith and scientific scepticism. 
The defender of the faith was a well-turned-out 
young gentleman in the early twenties, presumably 
a University undergraduate; his opponent, who pro- 
claimed himself an atheist, was an old man, with 
white hair and beard. It was a rather unusual spec- 
tacle—Radical Old Age against Youthful Conserv- 
atism. Between them, a man who looked like the 
referee in a prize ring, held an open Bible, which 
the young man took and read from when he wished 
to convince the crowd; the old man did likewise, 
when he wished to read something which he asserted 
was incredible. Standing close to each contestant 
was a “second,” holding a lantern, so that its rays 

193 


194 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


would fall on the open book, from which the prin- 
cipals in turn cited their evidences. 

Now it was clear to me that what drew and held 
the crowd was not their interest either in religion 
or in science. They were attracted as they would 
have been to a dog-fight; they applauded indiffer- 
ently a good hit, no matter which of the two fighters 
made it. In other words, the only interest displayed 
by the group, so far as I was able to estimate it, was 
a sporting interest. 

And as I finally turned away, and left the excited 
contestants arguing and quoting, the lantern bearers 
trying to throw light on the subject, and the crowd 
looking expectantly from one debater to the other, 
I reflected on the comparative futility of such 
methods of popular education. I believe that a 
public debate, so far as its value in the discovery and 
elucidation of truth is concerned, is not much better 
than a duel with pistols. Each of the contestants is 
set on defeating his opponent; the result is that 
when the affair is over, each man has more than ever 
before convinced himself, and has made no impres- 
sion on the convictions of his antagonist. The 
crowd, whether they are spectators, or readers of a 
magazine symposium—even assuming that they are 
open to conviction, a large order—take more in- 
terest in the verbal skill of the duellists than in the 
question at issue. The only important thing is the 
truth—and truth fares hardly in such treatment. 
Truth cannot be found in the heat of combat, and 


SCIENCE 195 


it is too elusive to be won either by the blows of 
force or by the rapier play of dialectic. If it can be 
found at all, it can be found only in solitary study, 
in unprejudiced meditation, or in impartial observa- 
tion by unpredatory eyes. And even then, Truth is 
so shy that it will reveal itself only to those who 
would honestly rather find it than have their own 
views and wishes confirmed. 

I doubt if any man has ever become a Christian 
by listening to a debate between religion and science; 
and I feel quite sure that such listening, no matter 
how amusing the struggle may be, has never pro- 
duced an efficient scientist. 

So far as I can discover, Paul did not feel that 
there was any ground for dispute between religion 
and science. He seems (I Timothy i, 3, 4) to have 
stated in one sentence what should be the highest 
aim of all reasonable men. For this is good and 
acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will 
have all men to be saved, and to come unto the 
knowledge of the truth. If Our Lord is the Way 
and the Truth and the Life, the pursuit of truth 
should not lead us aside from the way. Religion 
concerns a man’s soul, his personality; scientific truth 
is concerned with the development of his mind and 
body. 

Religion and Science have no quarrel, and should 
never be placed in opposition. Each of the two has a 
foe so formidable that it is worse than futile to 
waste effort in civil war. The enemy of science is 


196 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Ignorance, the father of Error; the enemy of re- 
ligion is Selfishness, the parent of Sin. 

When Religion, no matter with what beneficent 
motive, attempts to control Science, the result is as 
unfortunate as when it attempts to control the State; 
and when Science attempts to control Religion, man 
loses the chief thing that raises him above the beasts. 

Yet not for a moment do I believe that there can 
be a spiritual truth which is scientifically and demon- 
strably false. Let us feed no illusion to our hungry 
hearts. I don’t believe in the value of anything that 
is only ‘‘allegorically” true; nor will I guide my life 
on any philosophy which says that although such 
and such a thing never happened we should believe 
and act “as if’ it had. ‘Truth is truth, everywhere 
and always, so far as Fact is concerned. 

If I did not believe in the objective truth of the 
Christian religion, [ should not waste any more time 
in going to church. And here I have good church 
authority on my side. ‘‘Never,” said St. Thomas 
Aquinas, the thirteenth century philosopher, “can 
faith say one thing and reason another.” In an in- 
teresting booklet, 4 Comparative Study of St. 
Thomas Aquinas and Herbert Spencer (1923), by 
Sister M. Fides Shepperson, I find 


Aquinas and Spencer have in common the belief that there 
can be but one order of truth. The Revelation-truths can never 
be in conflict with the reason-truths—according to Aquinas. 
Religion and science, says Spencer, are as the outer and the 
under surfaces of a shield . . . if both have bases in the reality 


SCIENCE 197 


of things, then between them there must be fundamental har- 
mony. ... Faith is good, says Thomas, but faith with gnosis 
(knowledge) is better. He who has only faith is as a child 
in the knowledge of God; he who has faith and the philosophy 
that supports faith is as a stalwart man. On this subject 
Clement of Alexandria says, “He who assents to the teachings 
of Christ and the Church, without striving by the aid of 
philosophy to give an intellectual basis to his assent, possesses 
faith, but he does not possess the gnosis (teachings of the 
Logos), which is to faith what the full-grown man is to the 
child.” 

Much as I admire the sincerity and Christian 
character of the late Mr. Bryan, I think he was 
deeply and dangerously in error when he said that 
the State Legislatures should control the textbooks 
and the teachings in the public schools. Members of 
state legislatures are authorities neither on science 
nor on education; and there can be no pursuit of 
truth unless the pursuer is free. If you shackle him, 
he cannot advance. 

On the other hand, it is equally futile and danger- 
ous for science to attempt to control religious teach- 
ing or to substitute itself for religion. Yet this is 
often urged today. In an address delivered at Com- 
mencement at a great eastern university in America 
a few years ago, a professor of science declared that 
in future science must take the place of religion. 
Such a remark showed an incapacity to understand 
the meaning of religion. It would be just as sensible 
to say that botany must take the place of music, and 
trigonometry the place of painting. 


198 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


Arrogance is as repulsive in a scientist as it is in 
a minister of the Gospel. The former should have 
that unaffected humility accompanying the little 
known and the vast unknown; the latter’s daily real- 
isation of the disparity between him and his Master 
should annihilate pride. 

I find that some Christian ministers today take 
opposing attitudes toward science, both of which 
seem to be capable of improvement. There is the 
minister who, when he thinks of the very word, 
science, sees red; he imagines that science is the 
Antichrist. ‘Thus he closes his mind, is blind and 
deaf to what everybody else is seeing and hearing, 
and is finally incapable of any intellectual progress. 

On the other hand there are some ministers who 
seem so anxious to placate scientists that they adopt 
what is almost a fawning attitude. They are in this 
bad shepherds, deserting their flock. I have read 
statements by ministers that the best revelation of 
God is in science. But to the loyal Christian there 
is only one supreme revelation. 

Now while only a few scientists deny the existence 
of God, the Supreme Being revealed by science is 
a million leagues short of Our Father in Heaven. 
The god revealed by science is a Force infinite in 
power and (perhaps) intelligence, but quite devoid 
of any interest in humanity. There is not the slight- 
est indication in the universe revealed by modern 
science of a god who cares for any human being, or 


SCIENCE 199 


of a god with any moral or noble attributes. We 
cannot even use the masculine pronoun—all we can 
say is It. 

The god revealed by a scientific study of nature 
was clearly, honestly, and pitilessly set forth by the 
late Professor W. G. Sumner, who made a profound 
study of the science of society. His biographer, 
Harris E. Starr, in stating Sumner’s position, states, 
I think, the position which science—unaided by any 
Christian revelation—must honestly take. 


Man is a piece of the earth. His relationship thereto is 
that of a part subordinate to the whole. Out of it along with 
other forms of life he has come. In conjunction with theirs his 
existence must be maintained. ‘To the physical laws and con- 
ditions surrounding him, his well being requires that he properly 
adjust himself. From the earth, under the conditions it sets, 
he must get his means of subsistence. Toward him as he ap- 
proaches her on the enterprise upon which his life depends, she 
turns a cold, hard face. “There is no sentiment in nature, no 
predilection to serve man’s interests. ‘That she was made for 
him is true only in the sense that he may possess her if he can. 
Before her he has “no more right to life than a rattlesnake; 
he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to 
the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain 
the struggle for existence if he can find within himself the 
power with which to do it.” From her, moreover, he gets only 
what he extorts. Life is ever a struggle, not a feast of good 
things. There is no “boon” in nature, nor has there ever been. 
.. . He lives and grows if he is strong enough to conquer 
obstacles; if not, “then he may lie down and die of despair on 
the face of the boon and not a breeze, or a leaflet, or a sun- 
beam will vary its due course to help or pity him.” 


200 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


I have given this long quotation, because it is abso- 
lutely true so far as it goes; and the truth, whether 
welcome or not, is wholesome. Such is the god re- 
vealed by science, which is, in the religious sense, no 
God at all. Therefore if we really are to abandon 
everything in the New Testament that is called 
““supernatural,’’ we should abandon prayer, worship, 
church-going, and buckle down to work, with the 
assurance that God does not even help those who 
help themselves, He being quite indifferent as to 
whether we sink or swim. 

But if one compares that god, thus revealed by 
science, with the God revealed by Jesus Christ, we 
shall see there was some necessity for the Incarna- 
tion, if we are to come into any communication with 
the Infinite; and we must not forget how man has 
been aided in his struggle by prayer. 

Science, as I understand it, does not make Chris- 
tian faith impossible or unreasonable; science takes 
us as far as unassisted verifiable knowledge can go; 
Wordsworth and other poets saw more personality 
in Nature than the scientist sees; and a reasonable 
Christian faith sees even more than the poets. 

I honour and admire all scientific men, who in sin- 
cerity, self-denial, and patient labour, are endeavour- 
ing to ascertain the truth. No Christian should ever 
be afraid of the truth, for we believe that God is 
truth. There are some Christian people who are 
afraid to take up the morning paper, for fear some 
scientist will have discovered something that will 


SCIENCE 201 


destroy their faith. Fear not, little flock. Let them 
do their best—or their worst. They can never 
annihilate God, or the record of the life of Christ 
on earth. 

Many people talk about the ‘history of the con- 
flict between religion and science” as though science 
had been always right and religion always wrong. 
History, really, is the history of human effort, 
whether it is the history of politics, of science, of 
art, of religion. And the one thing certain about 
humanity is its uncertainty; not only its proneness 
to error, but its error. I believe the Founder of the 
Christian religion was divine; but I no more expect 
similar divinity in church-members than I should ex- 
pect to discover that every private in Napoleon’s 
army had the brains of the leader. The Church is 
a human institution, like a political party; its nobility 
of aim, and desire to serve its Master, have not kept 
its members from the mistakes inherent in human 
nature. 

But what is true of the history of the church is 
fully as true of the history of science. The history 
of science in general and of medicine in particular, 
is the history of error, quackery, fatal mistakes. 
Centuries ago, when a poor fellow was suffering 
from appendicitis, his scientific doctors consulted 
astrological charts; even in my lifetime, I can re- 
member people suffering from tuberculosis who were 
shut up by doctor’s orders in closed rooms, so no 
draught of air should kill them. Doctors used to 


202 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


bleed patients when such treatment made death more 
speedy. Shall we then scoff at doctors and at science 
because of all these errors? By no means. It was 
the imperfection of humanity, not the fault of 
science, that made these doctors do the wrong thing. 
It is the imperfection of Christians, not of religion, 
that causes them to err. 

It is folly to give up religious faith because of 
some alleged discovery of science. To believe in 
Jesus and follow him, that is religion; to study the 
origin of the texts of the Gospels, that is science. 
Now suppose a man forty years ago gave up his 
faith in Jesus because a scientific critic declared—as 
some did then—that the Gospels were written sev- 
eral centuries after Christ died. Science has revised 
that opinion. Now there are scientific critics who 
declare that all four Gospels were written before 
75 A.D. In adhering to any scientific discovery, be 
sure and get the latest edition of the book. ‘The 
average life of any scientific theory is, I believe, 
about seven years. ‘The life of Jesus is still potent 
after nearly twenty centuries. 7 

I do not wish for a moment to take the cheap 
attitude of ridiculing science; such a position is 
stupidly unintelligent. I am merely trying to call 
attention to facts that are often forgotten, and to 
show that the sphere of religion cannot be success- 
fully usurped by the sphere of science. 

I read an excellent article sometime ago by a 
scientific man, Albert E. Wiggam. One sentence, 


SCIENCE 203 


however, needs amendment. He is comparing the 
purity of science with the cruelty of religion, as 
shown in history: 


In all its history science has never persecuted anybody. 
Throughout all history dogmatic religion and religion based 
upon authority have persecuted wellnigh everybody. But science 
comes to men with no blood upon its hands. It offers its min- 
istry to men with a past as unsullied as the morning and with a 
spirit as fresh as youth and as tolerant as the sunshine. 


Self-satisfaction, the “holier-than-thou” feeling, 
leads one into error as surely in science as in religion. 

The word “tolerant” in that paragraph needs 
some revision. Some advocates of science love to 
represent ministers of the Gospel as intolerant, and 
scientific men as calm, tolerant lovers of truth. Now 
if the pursuit of scientific research produced no evil 
results either to humanity or to the researchers, such 
a position might be tenable. It so happens, how- 
ever, that while scientific men are doing their best 
to invent monstrous engines of cruelty and destruc- 
tion, ministers of the Gospel are preaching good will 
and charity to all. No blood upon the hands of 
science? 

Take the recent World War. In 1911 I heard a 
German professor quote with fervid admiration this 
sentence of John Stuart Mill. “Any man whose fear 
of consequences is greater than his love of truth has 
no business to be a college professor.’ Well, what 
happened when the war broke out? Was there a 


204 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


single scientific man in Germany who had the cour- 
age to prefer truth to national sentimentalism? 
Haeckel, who had always ridiculed sentimentalism 
in religion as opposed to the noble, self-sacrificing 
pursuit of truth, found himself stating that Germany 
was entirely right and not an aggressor. Where 
was his love of truth and where his sentiment then? 
Was there any prominent scientist in any country 
(except Bertrand Russell in England) who pre- 
ferred the truth to nationalism? 

And how about the ministers of the Gospel, who 
it is said selfishly prefer sentimentalism to cold 
truth? In Vermont, a Baptist minister, who de- 
clared that war was contrary to the teachings of 
Jesus, was sentenced to a Federal prison for fifteen 
years; in Los Angeles a group of ministers, for the 
same crime, were taken to jail; the Bishop of Utah 
lost his position. Many other cases could be cited. 

From what class have come the martyrs for the 
truth? From the scientists or from the saints? 
Was Faber speaking of scientists when he wrote the 
tremendous words 


Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, 
Were still in heart and conscience free; 

How sweet would be their children’s fate, 
If they, like them, could die for thee! 


To read current comment, one might imagine that 
Christian priests and ministers were always perse- 
cuting scientific martyrs; but how many scientists 


SCIENCE 205 


have died horrible deaths at the hands of Christians, 
compared to the men who have died for their re- 
ligious faith? It is not science, but religion that can 
claim the noble army of martyrs. If the love of 
truth is evidenced by the willingness to die for it, it 
is religion and not science that can show the honour 
roll. 

In the instances of war and other crises, I am not 
saying who is right and who wrong. I am talking 
about courage and the willingness to pursue at all 
hazards what a man believes to be the truth. It 
takes a test to prove men. 

But let us have an end of the quarrel between 
science and religion. A religious man who loves the 
truth has the scientific spirit; and a scientist who 
sees not only the works of Nature but the divine 
element that gives them significance, has the religious 
spirit. 

Science deals with man’s origin; religion with his 
destiny. And in a truly hospitable mind, illumined 
by the sincere, unbiased love of truth and by the 
lamp of the Holy Spirit, the supreme thing is per- 
haps neither man’s origin nor his destiny. I[t is his 
opportunity. No matter about our origin; let the 
dead past bury its dead; no matter about the future; 
the morrow shall take thought for the things of 
itself. What shall we do today? 

Scientific people and religious people should unite 
in the endeavour to follow and to discover truth, in 
the endeavour to alleviate human suffering, in the 


206 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 


endeavour to destroy superstition—whether it is the 
quackery of religion or the quackery of science. In 
the early church there were many fakers, as there 
are today both among church-members and among 
physicians. Paul became rather impatient with 
those who insisted that they had the gift of 
‘tongues,’ which meant in practice that they usually 
talked an appalling amount of nonsense. He said, 
“I had rather speak five words with my understand- 
ing, . . . than ten thousand words in a tongue.” 

There is this distinction between the modern ad- 
vance of scientific thought and the modern advance 
of religious thought. Scientific men are quite rightly 
endeavouring to discover new facts, in other words 
to go steadily forward; whereas the best advance 
in Christian thought—that which is now clearly 
observable—is going backward; going back through 
the long ages of accumulated error about Jesus, to 
Jesus himself. Science must go forward to find per- 
fection, which though it is in the future, will per- 
haps never be found. But Christians are fortunate 
in having perfection revealed once for all in the 
person of Jesus Christ. We do not need a new 
religion—we need to practise the one we have. 
Jesus lived on earth nearly two thousand years ago; 
in his ideas and teachings he is ten thousand years 
ahead of this present time. 











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